


The Art of Pulling Pie from Thin Air

by TricksterShi



Series: The Pie Bitch 'Verse [1]
Category: Original Work, Supernatural
Genre: Alcoholic Berries, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Brief Description of Torture, Crack, Gen, Meddling Gods, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TricksterShi/pseuds/TricksterShi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been four years since he disappeared from Stanford and Sam is wandering. Oh, he knows who he is, no amnesia involved (anymore), but he's not fully human (he's sure) and with that whole "if you walk out that door, don't you come back" still hanging between him and his family, Sam doesn't think they'll view his new demi-god status any different than college (except there might be more guns involved).</p><p>With the vague and mostly frustrating guidance of trickster Coyote, his blunt and sarcastic teacher Fred (female, half-god), alcoholic berries, homicidal non-Winchester hunters, and pie, Sam comes to find that insanity brings the best clarity, and maybe you can go home again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Sam ends up in the same bar as Dean it's a complete accident.

 

 

  
[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/poetartist/pic/0006w1p5/)

 

 

 

 

When Sam ends up in the same bar as Dean it's a complete accident **.**   Sam’s never been there before in his life- _pretty sure, anyway_ \- and he chooses it based on the fact it’s close and he’s so tired that he’s willing to indulge in something familiar for comfort.  
  
Stupid, stupid, stupid.  
  
He’s not paying attention, either.  He blames that on the exhaustion; every bone in his body aches, his head feels full and he just wants a beer, to kick back and relax in the company of humans for a while, even if he never says anything but, “Another beer, thanks,” to the bartender.  He just wants to feel connected again; it’s been so long since he let himself have that.  
  
The place is full enough that Sam has to weave between people just to get to the bar.  Alcohol, smoke, sweat and Johnny Cash hang in the air.  The clack of pool cues soothes his nerves and the cold beer- the cheapest they have- cools his insides.  
  
He hasn’t been somewhere like this in a long time; he’s almost forgotten how much it makes him feel at home.  
  
He’s been there a couple hours-- warming the barstool, nursing his beers-- when someone sidles up beside him.  He doesn’t open his eyes at first.  There’s plenty of people moving around, brushing up against him, so he doesn’t think anything of it.  
  
Once, a long time ago, he would have been concerned.  With a gun at the small of his back and numerous knives on his person, he would have been watching for anyone or anything getting close as potential threats.  
  
It’s so nice not to have that particular worry, at least not on the scale it used to be.  There’s not much that can harm him anymore that he knows of; the things that can usually stick to a different dimension all together.  Anything here, well, he’s pretty hidden and doesn’t leave a trail.  
  
“Can I get a beer over here?”  
  
Sam startles and stops breathing.  
  
It’s so surreal; Sam can’t even think about reacting, just stares openly.  Dean is here in the flesh, leather jacket, amulet, hidden weapons, charming smile and all.  He’s a few years older, Sam can see new faint scars on his neck and deeper crows feet around his eyes, but otherwise it’s hard to believe it’s been four years.  _Earth time, anyway,_ he thinks.  
  
Sam is still staring, still not breathing when Dean notices and turns his way.  
  
He can see the thoughts flicker across his brother’s face.  Dean’s always been so expressive that way.   He frowns slightly, eyebrows pinched, wondering what the hell this guy’s problem is.  Then the _wait, he looks familiar._   Then his eyes go wide as it all clicks into place.  
  
Sam isn’t even in disguise; he shed all the illusion when he came in, too drained to hold up a different face for strangers that would never see him again anyway.  He doesn’t look that much older than he did when he left Stanford, he knows, though his hair is longer and messier, and his face seems permanently thin.  
  
He really should have known better.  
  
Dean straightens, eyes locked on Sam’s, and Sam- Sam doesn’t move.  He’s spent so long running it’s almost like he forgot why.  
  
Dean’s reaching out for Sam when the bartender sets the beer down on the bar.  “Dollar fifty, son.”  
Dean’s eyes cut to the right for a split second, but that’s all Sam needs.  He’s out of his chair and slipping into the crowd.  
  
“Wait- Sammy!” Dean shouts over the noise, but it barely cuts through the pounding in Sam’s head.  
  
He reaches the door and throws himself out it, mind scattering away as the cold air punches him in the gut with its intensity.  A hand grabs a fistful of his shirt, and he doesn’t think twice before spinning in the loose gravel, left hand shooting out, palm open, and pushing Dean back so hard he stumbles into the wall.  
  
There’s a moment there where he looks back at his brother, and thoughts race through his mind.  Thoughts like, he could stay; he could say something, say _anything_.  
  
Sam twists around and vanishes like a magician’s scarf, no noise, nothing flashy.  He’s perfected that move over time, and he doesn’t have a choice anymore, if he ever did.  
  
Sam reappears two hundred miles away on top of a water tower, _Home of the Knights_ written on the side in cracked blue paint.  He’s shaking from head to toe, knees threatening to buckle.  He grips the rail in front of him so hard his bones crack.  There will be permanent markings on the metal from his fingers when he lets go, but he can’t yet.  
  
Most of his mind is screaming at him to keep running, telling him not to stop until he gets to the Shadowlands and not poke his head back out until a hundred earth years pass.  
  
He doesn’t, though.  
  
Sam stays on the tower until the sun starts to rise, until his heart settles and he can let go of the rails.  He runs numb fingers over the new dips and creases in the metal.  He wonders how the next person up here will explain that.  
  
Sam twists and comes out in Chicago.  Another thought and his hair goes blonde and shrinks.  His face ages ten years with wrinkles, his chin sprouts a goatee **,** his frame shortens five inches, and his clothes ripple out and then smooth into an Armani suit.  When it’s done, he slips out onto the sidewalk and melts into the crowd.  
  
He ignores the small voice inside screaming to go back to that bar.  He knows by now that no one ever gets what they want, and he could end the world by trying.

 

                                                                                                                                     #

  
  
  
 _Sam woke up bare-chested and barefoot in a desert.  Miles of saguaro, yucca, sage, and twisted mesquite trees dotted the rocky landscape.  Bright stars formed constellations he’d never seen before in a sky streaked with red and purple, a sky somehow big enough for midnight and sunset both-- or sunrise, he couldn’t tell.  A ritualistic circle of painted rocks, animal bones, shells and feathers encircled him._  
  
 _This wasn’t normal._  
  
 _Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember what might_ actually _be normal, but he thought it was safe to say that this wasn’t a normal occurrence for him.  He hoped so, anyway._  
  
 _Time passed and stood still in that place, a weird sensation of moving at the speed of light and sitting still all at once.  When he concentrated, he felt like at any moment his body would dissolve like sugar in water, drift away into the desert and become part of it._  
  
 _The woman materialized out of the air minutes, hours, or years after he woke up.  She was a few years older; mid twenties, he thought. She had one hand resting on her hip, the other holding a bottle of water._  
 _“Drink,” she said, and tossed it to him._  
  
 _Sam drank, even though he wasn’t thirsty, or he thought he wasn’t, until the first drop touched his tongue.  He couldn’t get enough of it then, and the bottle never seemed to empty.  The woman just watched him, studied him, and he watched her back.  She looked like someone he could pass on a street and never look twice at.  But here, now, clad in jeans, hiking shoes, and a 3 Doors Down t-shirt, she looked sharper, like she’d been cut out of someplace else and pasted here by amateur hands._  
  
 _He wondered if he looked the same._  
  
 _“Come on.”_  
  
 _Sam clutched at the bottle and followed her from the circle out into the desert.  She didn’t talk, though she glanced at him as they walked, curious, maybe a little disappointed by the way she kept a slight frown on her face.  The sand felt cool under his bare feet.  A star fell from the sky, burned in a wide arc and disappeared behind a cliff jutting out from the earth like a giant’s head._  
  
 _A closer look told him it_ was _a giant’s head.  He made out hollowed eyes looking toward the sky, the mouth a gaping cave, caught mid-roar or plea.  The shoulders sloped gently into the ground where the rest of it remained buried._  
  
 _“Where are we?” he asked._  
  
 _“The Shadowlands.”_  
  
 _“Are we dead?”_  
  
 _She laughed.  “Far from it, Sam.”_

 

                                                                                                                                     #

  
   
Sam is good at staying busy.  Keeping his mind occupied to stave off prickly thoughts was a skill he learned fast as a child and honed as an adult in the Shadowlands, where time is in abundance and thoughts left on their own can become monsters of titan proportions.  Still, this is not the Shadowlands, and the same tricks don’t always work.  
  
Sam never slept in the Shadowlands.  Here he can, and does, indulges in it like he does in candy bars that will never make him fat and alcohol that will never make him drunk.  
  
Dreams come with sleep, and that is one area of himself he cannot change or influence.  
  
The dreams start out peaceful,  he assumes; he doesn’t really remember the beginnings, only the middles and endings where things go from bad to horrible and eventually wake him with his heart pounding and sweat drenching him.  
  
They never get any easier to deal with.  He kind of expects them to because, hey, eventually he kinda, sorta, mostly got over the clown dreams after Dean insisted he watch Stephen King’s _It_ to desensitize himself.  It took years and he still can’t bring himself to go into a carnival, but he doesn’t start crying when they pop up unexpectedly anymore.  
  
Sam wishes the clown dreams would come back after all this.  At least they don’t leave him shivering in a puddle of fear and self-loathing.  
  
Sam wakes from his fourth nightmare in a row and hops from the Alaskan coast to North Carolina, where he walks the beach until the sun turns his neck red.  He stops at a diner called Etta’s for lunch, eats a fish sandwich and drinks mediocre coffee.  
  
The waitress is nice to him.  A single mother of two, barely older than Sam, working double shifts because there’s no one else to bring in money, and she’s got more determination and fire in her than life can ever hope to beat out.  She keeps going because giving up and settling is not in her blood.  He reads all this as she passes the bill, their hands brushing for the barest instant.  
  
Sam leaves a forty-dollar tip and smiles when she wishes him a good day on his way out the door.  Sam gives her a wave, she rewards him with a tired smile.  She’ll find the winning lottery ticket in her apron when she goes on break.  
  
He stays in North Carolina for a couple days, enjoying the chilly mornings and the fresh seafood.  When the dreams keep him tossing and turning he goes to Georgia, hitching down the highway eating fresh picked peaches, enjoying the sweet juice making his hands and chin sticky in the heat and not thinking about anything other than the present.  
  
The highway is like a security blanket beneath his feet, the bubbling asphalt at three in the afternoon under the relentless sun.  He tosses peach and apple seeds over his shoulder and into pastures, laughing at himself, a modern-day Johnny Appleseed.  Behind him, green shoots push through the soil and reach for the sky.  
  
Sometimes it’s almost easy enough to forget he hasn’t always been this way.  
  
Nathan Cooly picks him up between two farms and gives him a ride to the next gas station.  Nathan is gruff and thinks Sam is off in the head for hitching at all, much less in the height of summer.  Sam knows the heat will not kill him, nor will thirst or hunger or a trolling serial killer, but he takes Nathan’s advice to get somewhere cool and earn himself a car with a nod and a smile.  
  
They talk about idle things for a while, the radio crackling with static and the Top 40 country songs of the moment, everything from baseball to weather to commenting on conversations that come in over the CB.  
“Why are you out here, son?  Shouldn’t you be in college?” Nathan asks as the orchards whiz by them, the scent of apples heavy on the breeze.  
  
“Should be,” he agrees.  “Didn’t really work out.”  
  
It twists his heart inside out, thinking of pencils, California sun, book bags that cut marks into his shoulders, midnight coffee shops with papers spread around him, new maybe-friends laughing and throwing back shots, celebrating whatever, whenever.  
  
His biggest dream--it could have been his best achievement.  Stanford was like a bright star on the horizon of his life, his chance to become his own person, to do things the way he wanted.  For all of six months he lived his dream, enjoyed even the hard parts, even the parts that made him think he might not be cut out for it.  
  
“Smart kid like you, should take advantage of an education,” says Nathan.  “You don’t wanna be a bum all your life.  It gets you nowhere fast.”  
  
Nathan knows this first hand.  In and out of juvie and rehab through most of his teens and twenties, he whiled away his younger years in an alcoholic haze, willing the pain inside away one shot of Jim and Jack at a time.  By the time he hit thirty he was washed up, broke, and barely alive when his liver decided enough was enough.  
  
Nathan says nothing of this, but the conversation brings so much of it to the surface that Sam has no chance of escaping the facts.  
  
Nathan is forty-five now, but looks sixty.  He cleaned up after his near-death experience, got a trucking license, and drove all over the states delivering loads of food to distributing companies.  It’s not a lot but it keeps him moving forward.  Nathan hadn’t had much to live for when he started, but he hadn’t wanted to die.  
  
Now, pinned to the sun visor above him, there’s a picture of a little boy smiling as he swings on a red plastic swing.  Nathan’s eyes drift up to it every five to ten miles, making sure it’s still there.  
  
“I don’t plan to be,” Sam murmurs over the rumble of the motor.  “Just have to get where I’m going.”  
  
Nathan nods. He knows how that is.  
  
Sam wishes he did.  
  
Nathan drops him at a Conoco three hours later with assurances that Sam has money for food and an extracted promise that he’ll get off the road soon and take advantage of his life.  
  
Sam watches the eighteen-wheeler shudder and pull away.  Down the road, Nathan’s going to get a phone call, the first in ten years since that picture was taken.  Sam doesn’t know what will be said--Nathan is a very private man, and just because he can doesn’t mean he likes to pry, but he knows it will keep Nathan going for a few more years until his liver finally gets the best of him.  
  
Sam’s heart hurts for Nathan, but he lets him go.  Even for Sam, there are certain rules he has to follow.  It has to be enough that the rest of Nathan’s short time will be better than all the years before it.  
  
Sam buys a Gatorade and a couple sandwiches with bills Nathan somehow managed to slip into his pocket and enjoys his lunch sitting on top of the Conoco awning.  He feeds bits of his bread to the pigeons eyeing him, smiling as they dive after the crumbs, stirring up dirt and leaves trapped in the grooves of the metal with their frantic wing beats.  
  
That night Sam sleeps beneath a bridge spanning a creek.  He watches the stars above, naming off constellations he knows.  They look strange to him now.  They were backwards in the Shadowlands, as a lot of things were.  He used to lie out in the desert for hours, watching the sky, relearning what he already knew from a different perspective.  
  
Sometimes, when he was still enough, he could almost feel the Earth shifting just out of his reach.  Sometimes he imagined he could almost feel people on the other side of the veil, going about their daily routines, imagined he could feel their dreams slip through and flutter over his skin like transparent butterflies.  
  
Sam turns on his side and curls his knees up.  He felt out of place in the Shadowlands, and he feels that way now, even though he’s back in the world he was born in.  Fred warned him about it.  Not in so many words--she never was one for long personal conversations, but he got the gist of it.  
  
He didn’t belong back there, and now he doesn’t fit right here either.  He’s homeless, in almost every sense of the word.  
  
Sam closes his eyes and ignores the voice that says he chose to be.  There wasn’t any choice, not really.

 

[](http://pics.livejournal.com/poetartist/pic/0006xkg6/)  
  
  
 _“You have to learn to control your mind, Sam.  It’s more than imagination now; it’s a tool.  Tools have to be used the right way. Otherwise, you hurt yourself and people around you.”_  
  
 _Sam clenched his jaw and concentrated on the pile of stones before him.  He’d already demolished the first pile.  Apparently, too much imagination could be a bad thing._  
  
 _“What do you want the rocks to become?”_  
  
 _He wanted to quit and get shitfaced drunk, but he bit his tongue.  There was no alcohol in the Shadowland, and even if there was, Fred would have drank it all herself, she said.  Sam sighed, collected his thoughts, and tried to concentrate._  
  
 _“What do you want it to be?”_  
  
 _Fred was behind him, out of the blast zone.  He didn’t like her there, but it was the safest place so far.  He decided not to make the rocks float again.  All the accomplished was flaming missiles that exploded on contact.  It wouldn’t take long for his hair to grow back on the right side, of course, but he didn’t want to risk singeing the rest off._  
  
 _Apparently, his brand of powers weren’t bent toward telekinesis, so Fred insisted they try external transformation._  
  
 _“Relax your body.  This isn’t a battle.  This is you, doing something natural.”_  
  
 _“This crap has never been natural before,” he snapped._  
 _“It is now.”_  
  
 _Sam breathed out hard.  “Easy for you to say.”_  
  
 _“No, actually.  I had a much harder time of it than you.  No one was here to guide my dumb ass and show me where I was going wrong.”_  
  
 _Sam closed his eyes and hung his head.  “Sorry,” he said after a few minutes._  
  
 _“Dude, it’s fine, but you still have to practice.  You want to go back home, right?  Can’t do that if you’re a loose cannon.”_  
  
 _Sam nodded._  
  
 _“I just want to go home.”_  
  
 _He left out the part about how he still couldn’t remember much of what happened before he woke up in the desert of the Shadowlands, how sometimes he got indistinct impressions of people and situations, but nothing concrete to hang a hope on.  Nothing in the cabin he and Fred rested in or anything out in the desert helped trigger any memories._  
  
 _Sometimes he was scared he’d never remember.  Others, he feared there was nothing_ to _remember.  He felt incredibly empty with nothing to tell him who he was, other than his name._  
  
 _“Then think of home,” Fred squeezed his shoulder.  “Close your eyes and let your mind take you there.  Maybe you won’t get anything today, but if you settle down, your mind might throw something your way that you can use.”_  
  
 _It was a long shot, he knew.  He’d been there almost three months, Shadowlands time, and so far he had a few flashes that left him with faint impressions of some place that smelled like leather and oil, and once sitting somewhere with someone in front of him._  
  
 _That was it, all he had to go on for who he used to be and who he left behind._  
  
 _“Relax, Sam.  I don’t want to dodge any more flaming rocks today.”_  
  
 _Sam breathed in and out, deep breaths that pushed his ribs as far as they would go.  He let the air out slow, and tried to picture all his tension leaving with it._  
  
 _He kept his eyes closed and thought back on those flashes, let them fill up his mind: the smell of oil and leather, the feeling of warmth spreading through him.  He took a breath and smelled exhaust, heated asphalt._  
  
 _Sam breathed in, breathed out, felt his mind go deeper.  The ghost of a breeze threaded through his hair, caressed his skin.  He thought he heard something faint, something with a melody and a beat._  
  
 _The stillness of the Shadowlands fell away without him noticing.  Sunlight- real sunlight, bright and sharp- pierced his eyelids and turned everything golden red.  He was in a car, the highway passing beneath him.  Something heavy and sweet filled his mouth- apple pie.  It tasted like summer and happiness._  
  
 _“Good stuff, isn’t it, Sammy?”_  
  
 _A loud crack brought him abruptly back to the present.  Sam opened his eyes._  
  
 _The pile of rocks weren’t rocks anymore.  Instead, there sat an oven-fresh apple pie, steam still rising from the two small cuts in the center of the crust._  
  
 _“Well, not what I was expecting, but awesome job,” Fred patted his shoulder and smiled._

                                                                                                                                   #

  
  
  
Minnesota isn’t a good experience.  He meets a jackass in a red Ford F-150 that tries to drug his drink and take him into the woods.  Said jackass is very surprised when Sam turns him into a donkey and leaves him on the side of the road.  Since he has a truck and doesn’t want a pissed off donkey following and braying at him for the next ten miles, he takes it and enjoys fiddling with the radio and rolling the windows down.  
  
If he reshapes the truck to kinda maybe resemble the Impala just a bit, well, it’s not like there’s anyone there to call him on it.  Besides, the ‘pala was his home since he was six months old and it feels good to drive something like her again.  
  
He stops in a place called The Shack about twenty miles away for a beer, makes sure he looks like a middle aged blue collar man just interested in unwinding from the long day.  
  
He’s on the alert for Dean, which is why he notices the hunters first-off when they come in on silent feet, sharing calculating glances.  He doesn’t know the pair, knows they never crossed paths with Dad when he was younger.  Sam’s not that concerned for himself, per se, but it never hurts to be careful.  Word tends to spread fast in the hunting community.  They may not be able to kill him, but dodging hunters until they grow tired or smart isn’t how he wants to spend the next few decades.  
  
They take up a table on the right with the best view of both the front and rear exits and order a round of beers.  Sam takes a pull on his and keeps his eyes on the dart game quickly gathering spectators as money is laid down.  
  
Sam kind of smiles; he has a lot of good memories centered around darts.  He was always better at them than pool as a child.  A handful of times he even beat Dean, which was the epitome of awesome when he was nine.  Of course, Dean could still give him wedgies and play keep away with his books, but he couldn’t keep his undefeated streak.  
  
The noise level rises when the guy in the blue trucker hat finally wins by a handful of points and springs for a round for the loser.  They collectively move toward the bar and close him in.  Sam doesn’t feel bad about it until someone brushes up behind him and he feels the edge of a knife- silver, if he’s not mistaken- press against his spine.  
  
“How about you come outside for a chat, buddy boy?” a voice whispers in his ear.  
  
Sam opens his mouth and the knife presses harder.  
  
“No talking, come on.”  
  
Sam complies, dropping a couple newly imagined dollars on the bar and gets up.  The hunters usher him out into the cold night.  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
Sam’s a good liar, but it grates on his nerves to act scared out of his wits when he’s simply tired and annoyed.  The hunter on the right gives him a shove, touches his neck for just a split second.  
His name is Merle Nivens, new to hunting by a year and a half after a shapeshifter took out most of the drilling unit he’d been on down in South Texas.  Shapeshifter watched too many horror movies, and Nivens was one of two survivors.  The other checked into a mental institution before hanging himself.  
Sam turned around, raised his hands as Nivens trained a gun with silver bullets on his heart.  
  
“Saw your work back there on the side of the road, buddy.  That was a real stupid move to pull on that poor bastard.  So what are you?  Witch?  Sorcerer?  Or are you something non-human?”  
  
Sam felt like rolling his eyes.  “That 'poor bastard' tried to drug and kill me, in case you were too far away to catch that bit.”  
  
“And you used demonic powers to corrupt his God given form.”  
  
Sam suppressed a laugh.  Oh, what he’d give to have these sons of bitches say that to the creature that made him this way.  
  
“He was a jackass,” Sam says with a shrug.  
  
“And you’re a dead monster,” says the other hunter.  
  
Nivens pulls the trigger and the silver bullet punches through Sam’s heart.  


                                                                                                                          #

  
  
  
_“Are we the only ones?”_   
  
_“No, there’s one more I know of, Thomas.  He’s a good friend, pretty much family.”_   
_They were sitting on the cabin’s porch, just watching the desert and the sky.  Sam stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankle.  He’d figured out how long he’d been there.  Shadowlands time, it was about five months.  Earth time, almost four years._   
  
_He wondered who was missing him back there, if they were still looking for him, or if they even knew he was gone.  Sometimes he got the feeling no one knew anything had happened, and  he didn’t know why.  The thought made him incredibly sad, and he usually tried to keep busy instead of thinking about it._   
_It was kind of hard to now, though.  Neither of them slept in the Shadowlands even though Sam, for one, felt exhausted.  He couldn’t remember ever being well rested._   
  
_“Where is he?”_   
  
_“Tahiti, I think.  His brother convinced him to take a vacation and try to lose his virginity.  It’s an ongoing process last I heard,” she chuckled._   
  
_Sam smiled, but his heart wasn’t in it.  The flashes sometimes got more detailed when he pushed hard enough, but he had yet to remember who was in them calling him Sammy, or Sam.  The first was a man, that much detail he did have.  He thought the latter might have been a woman, but the flashes had them both surrounded by too much light to make sure._   
  
_He wasn’t sure what to make of the light._   
  
_Fred didn’t talk much about the family and friends she had on the other side, but it was enough to make his chest hurt with want.  Sam fixed his eyes on a distant mountain range, pretty sure it was a giant sleeping woman.  She had a thick crop of sagebrush where her hair would be._   
  
_“Who made me like this?”_   
  
_It took courage to bring it up, but he didn’t know why.  So much felt taboo to ask about, unspoken secrets hanging like oppressive fog and he wasn’t worthy to know yet.  Sometimes, in the moments when Fred was gone, walking alone in the desert, or Sam reached a place of perfect silence in his head, he forgot for a moment that he hadn’t always been there, that he belonged somewhere else._   
  
_It scared him when he forgot.  He never said anything, but the Shadowlands felt almost like a prison, and sometimes he wondered if it might actually be Hell and it was his punishment for some horrendous wrong._   
  
_“He wants to tell you himself.” She shrugged.  She looked annoyed, but then, that seemed to be her default face, so he didn’t take it personally.  “He’s kind of a bastard like that.”_   
  
_“Why did he do it to you?”_   
  
_“I made a deal without reading the fine print.”_   
  
_Her tone didn’t invite any more questions, but he had one more to ask, need bubbling up in his chest.  If he’d done the same, he had to know._   
  
_“Do you regret it?”_   
  
_Fred picked at a hole in her jeans.  In the distance, Sam heard the growls and yips of creatures that made his skin crawl.  They never came within sight of the cabin.  Fred told him they knew better, those things: part animal, part human, their minds a dangerous mix of both.  He hated their noises, but Fred never worried._   
  
_“No,” she said sometime later, after she was silent so long Sam thought she wasn’t going to answer.  “Not when I think about the alternative.”_   
  


                                                                                                                                       #

  
  
“Son of a bitch.”  
  
Sam rubs at his chest, tries to sooth the sharp sting clawing at his muscles in the wake of the bullet drawing itself out.  He looks down at it cupped in his palm, bloodstained silver so small for how much pain it’s causing him.  
  
So, that’s good to know at least.  Silver won’t kill him, nor bullets themselves.  Sam drops the bullet with disgust.  
  
Nivens is staring up at him in shock, a banana in his hand where the offending gun had been.  The other hunter- Jonah Crete- is too busy munching grass in his new rabbit form to really care what’s going on.  
  
“What the hell are you?” Nivens asks.  
  
“Someone that doesn’t like being shot at.” He kicks the silver knife Crete tried throwing at him away from Nivens.  Once, it would have been a good weapon to take and add to the growing collection in the Impala’s trunk.  Never could have enough silver, after all, but, well, Sam didn’t really have need of it anymore.  “Seriously, what happened to common courtesy?  You could have just talked to me.”  
  
“You’re a monster,” Nivens bites out.  
  
Sam sneers and drops his hand.  His whole chest hurts, throbs actually, but it’s healing.  It feels weird.  
  
“I’m not doing anything but trying to pass through peacefully.  You’re the ones that opened fire first.”  
  
Nivens curls his lip, and Sam can hear and see his thoughts even though they aren’t touching.  He’s thinking of a case he worked, before he and Crete teamed up, a girl of twelve bitten by a werewolf out in Nebraska.  Nivens waited until the lunar cycle ended and strangled her when she changed back to human form, then put a silver bullet in her heart.  
  
The next morning he smiled and nodded at her parents as they came into the coffee shop, missing flyers in hand to plaster on the message board.  
  
“All monsters go bad, son,” he says.  “Doesn’t matter how good they wanna be.  All that evil gets to you eventually.”  
  
Sam’s stomach feels sick.  He shakes his head and counts, willing himself to calm down before he does something he’ll regret, something that will prove Nivens right.  
  
“Evil does get to you eventually,” Sam agrees.  He meets Nivens’ eyes, feels his own go hard.  “Thing is, I’m not the one it’s gotten to.”  
  
Nivens looks confused for a moment.  Sam doesn’t give him a chance to move, his mind so strong and fast now, reaching out and shifting as soon as the thought is formed.  Nivens lets out a scream that silences halfway.  Then it’s over and Nivens is looking up at him with large brown eyes and is so still he’s not breathing.  Then he snorts, shakes his head.  Sam counts seven tines on his antlers.  
  
“I would get going if I were you,” Sam tells him.  “Hunting season is just getting into swing around here.”  
  
Nivens bolts for the safety of the woods to their right, startling Crete who streaks off as well, diving for the thick underbrush, disappearing in a flash.  
  
Sam shuffles to the knife and picks it up, turning it over in his hands.  It’s a solid weapon, well-crafted and blessed by three different religious leaders: two priests, one priestess.  Faint symbols cover the blade, invisible to the naked human eye.  Either Crete didn’t know what he really had or he banked on something made for pure intent to do the job.  
  
Sam hesitates.  This weapon needs a home, preferably with someone that knows what it is and can put it to use.  He chews his lip, squints up at the sky.  Finally, he nods to himself and twists, steps out in West Virginia and into a UPS building, the knife concealed and protected in a box as he steps up to the counter.  
  
“Where is it going, sir?” the clerk asks, snapping her gum as she sets it on the scale.  
  
“Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Can you use your fastest delivery?  It’s kind of urgent.”  
  
“Sure thing.”  
  
She rings up the amount and Sam conjures a fifty to take care of it. He waves his hand over the box--the girl doesn’t notice--and a letter appears inside, folded neatly below the blade.  
  
 _Hope this is useful.  S._  
  
It’s a precarious choice, sending this to Bobby.  He wasn’t on good terms with John before Sam left, and if his dad is still the same as he ever was, they’re still probably not on speaking terms.  Sam isn’t sure that animosity extends to him and Dean, but even if it doesn’t, Bobby will have a use for the knife.  After he tests the box and the knife for supernatural booby traps six ways from Sunday, of course, but Sam understands that.  
  
He walks away before he can second-guess himself.  Chances are Bobby will never contact Dean.  Chances are, signing it simply with 'S.' isn’t going to tell Bobby it was Sam that send the box.  Bobby probably knows lots of people with S. as an initial.

 

                                                                                                                             #

  
  
  
Sam stops hitching and just pops in and out of where he wants to be. He's the first to admit he's being paranoid, but he's got that itchy feeling under his skin like someone somewhere is watching him, and after Dean and the other hunters he doesn't want to take any more chances.  
  
After all, there are other things out there as powerful or more so than Sam, and they’ve been alive and active a hell of a lot longer.  
  
Florida is nice, if really creepy.  The state is crawling with supernatural activity, most of it centered, strangely enough, in Disneyland.  Sam watches that one from a distance, loses count at around three hundred when he tried to pinpoint how many demons, ghosts, various monsters, and just plain weird creatures are lurking there.  
  
There is a network of hunters systematically hitting that one, so he doesn’t feel the need to lend a hand and leaves them to it.  He does manage to grab a postcard before he leaves, on a whim.  He’s not sure what to do with it, but he also snatches a bag and puts it inside, where it’s joined by another postcard from Des Moines and a tacky glowing snow globe few days later from Hell, Michigan.  
  
He feels antsy in Colorado and decides tequila and Mexican sun are in order, so he heads beyond the border for three weeks.  He walks around the pyramids one day, stays in a pink and turquoise room above a small cantina on the coast the next.  He collects some more post cards, finds a black marker, and somewhere between Tijuana and Tamaulipas, he starts writing to Dean on them.  
  
They start out simple and short, the swipe and drag of the marker a comfort when his mind lets too much guilt in, too much doubt.  This way, he can pretend that things aren’t permanent.  
  
‘Wish you’d been here.’  
  
‘You were right.  Mickey and Donald are possessed.’  
  
‘The giant ball of twine reminds me of Indiana Jones marathons.’  
  
‘This place smells like old cheese.  Literally.’  
  
It helps, some.  Dean will never read them, but Sam can pretend.  He's just on a solo road trip, just out seeing the world.  He might be able to go home one day.  
  


                                                                                                                                 #

 

  
  
Then he spends a night in a little Mexican village with no name and it changes.  These people are poor and living in one of the harshest environments he’s ever seen, but they’re happy.  He watches the women work and laugh together preparing dinner, washing clothes, chiding children for playing too rough.  He sees the men go about their work tending animals and cars, recounting stories while making bullets and skinning rattlesnakes and rabbits.  
  
He watches them, feels oddly unsettled and lonely.  As night falls, several families come together for dinner and eat around an open fire.  One of the women sits down with a bag of wool and proceeds to twist it with a spindle, spinning the fluffy wool into fine thread.  
  
She has a small notebook in her bag, every page blank and slightly yellow because it’s a gift from her daughter but the old woman doesn’t need something to keep notes and measurements in, not as long as she’s been doing this craft.  Sam snags it on impulse, realizing how much he’s missed writing more than a few lines to fill the square of a postcard.  
  
He used to write all the time.  Homework, school schedules, directions, incantations, exorcisms, games of hangman played in the car as it rumbled on empty highways through empty lands.  He wrote so much at Stanford; took so many notes that his hand cramped up the first three days of school.  
  
Sam realizes he misses the simple act of writing.  It makes him wonder how much of himself he hasn’t let come back, even if he can remember it all now.  
  
Sam pushes thoughts of college away and runs his fingers over the stiff pages, smoothes out the curls at the edges.  That’s when he notices the ghost watching him from beyond the ring of firelight.  
  
“Hello,” he says.  
  
“You’re not human,” she says, and she’s speaking Spanish, but Sam understands her without trying.  “You’re not dead either.”  
  
“No,” he agrees with a flinch.  He needs to get used to the truth, but it’s still hard.  
  
She looks at him, dark eyes dull like fish scales, and her blue dress hanging in tatters off what’s left of her bony shoulders.  Bruised-looking bites cover her skin; he sees white bone peeking through where flesh and muscle were torn away.  
  
“What happened to you?”  
  
She nods toward the darkening desert, long shadows swallowing the land, turning it into a void beneath the sheltering stars.  
  
“I walked out there and they got me,” she says, pointing.  Most of her finger is a ragged stump.  “Hungry little things, little beasts I never saw before.  Coyotes weren’t coming up anymore. I thought my father and the others finally drove them away, so I wanted to walk farther into the desert.  I heard…heard singing.  I couldn’t stop listening and following.  Then they were everywhere and they got me.”  
  
She looks back to the fire, wistful regret plain on her face, the flames casting light into the jagged hollows and holes in her features.  
  
“I want to go home.”  
  
Sam’s hands tighten on the notebook.  His chest aches, and whatever he feels from her, it’s nothing compared to the same hole he feels in himself.  
  
“I can’t bring you back to life,” he says as the fire grows dim and people filter back to their own houses, carrying chairs and full, sleepy children in their arms.  “But I can send you on.”  
  
The girl blinks at him, expression tight, unhappy.  Eventually, she nods.  
  
Sam puts the notebook in his bag and holds out his hand.  
  
“Will you make sure those things don’t get anyone else?” she asks.  “They’re already coming closer.  They’re always so hungry.”  
  
She’s thinking about her little sister, a girl with a sunny smile and a mildly autistic mind, a child that likes to dance and often forgets she isn’t supposed to let her feet take her further than the old junkers behind their house.  
  
“I’ll take care of them,” he promises.  
  
She gives him a decayed smile.  Sam breathes in and feels for the fabric separating the worlds.  He tugs it, pulls the threads open just a bit, and sends her through.  Her form fades like a Polaroid left out in the sun, the details scrubbed white until he puts the threads back in place and she disappears altogether.  
Sam gives the village one last look as he hitches his pack over his shoulder, then walks out into the desert with the moon at his back and sure feet picking through the rocky open landscape.  
  
His heart still beats like an open wound, and he wonders how long he can live with it that way.  
  
Then he remembers he can’t really die, and wonders if that isn’t the biggest joke of all.  
  
[](http://pics.livejournal.com/poetartist/pic/0006ysc2/)  
  
  
The hungry things are chupacabra, a pack of twenty-two living in the hills, using the dens the coyote pack left abandoned.  They laze around in the sun, gray, hairless bodies soaking up the heat, red tongues lolling out of fanged mouths, teeth stained brown.  They look like mindless animals.  
  
They’re not.  
  
Sam closes his eyes and can feel them miles before he reaches the dens.  He can hear the faint echoes of people on the wind, their voices trapped around the chupacabra where they keep them until they need to lure another victim into their sights.  It’s some kind of ancient magic perverted by lower minds that can’t get enough of the hunt, the kill, and the energy dying screams give them.  
  
The place reeks of death.  He sees young pups chewing on the last scraps of a human ribcage, high-pitched growls and yips rising as they scuffle and shove at each other, vying for the best strips of dried meat curling off the bone.  Scraps of blue cloth sway in the breeze a few feet away, caught in a sage bush, the edges stained.  On the other side of the hill, an old beat up truck sits silent with the doors open, the keys still in the ignition, a rifle half buried in the sand four feet away, a man’s decayed hand still clutching the stock.  
  
It’s not long until Sam realizes what they remind him of.  The way they sound, the way they move, the tracks, it fits.  He doesn’t know how these things escaped the Shadowlands, or how they came to work that kind of magic here.  It doesn’t matter.  
  
Sam sits in the sun and lets the heat boil his blood, his anger rising with the temperature.  He tells himself he’s doing this for the girl, tells himself it’s perfectly rational when he steps into the den area and takes out the entire pack with thoughts snapping through his fingers like thunder, with lightning flashing in his mind.  
  
When it’s over and the red haze lifts from his eyes, Sam surveys the damage in the sudden silence.  He realizes it didn’t solve anything. The hole in his chest is still weeping steadily, and no band-aid is big enough to stretch over it.  
  
Sam brings in wind and sand to cover what’s left of the dens.  When it’s done he’s the only one that can sense the death and blood beneath the earth, can feel the bones beneath his hands when he runs his hand through the grainy dirt, fingers tracing symbols he no longer needs to know or use.  
  
It hits him harder this time, knowing he can’t die.  Sam has the sinking feeling he’ll be like the bones under the sand one day, decades, millennia from now.  He’ll remember things that have passed out of history, remember things like cassette players and classic cars and roadside fruit stands that still work on the honor system, leaving a cigar box out for the money.  He’ll still remember shared watermelon and spitting black seeds at his brother while Dad scoured a local paper, the gray pages spread over the hood of the car as fluffy clouds dotted the sharp blue sky.  
  
He’s the only one that will remember, a million different things no longer important, no longer existing, the last one to carry them inside.  No one will remember him.  
  
Sam throws up and the heat bakes his skin right through.  He keeps on until he’s as empty as the sky inside, until he thinks he could swallow a rock, like tossing it into a bottomless well, imagines the rock would never hit bottom.  
  
Later that night, Sam washes the sour taste of vomit down with the sour bite of cheap tequila.  He finds the notebook again when he rummages though his pack.  The blank pages sit there, full of possibility and tempting, waiting.  Sam takes the marker, turns it into a ballpoint pen, and writes his first letter to Dean.


	2. Second Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seattle is a nice change from the unforgiving desert.

 

                                                                 [](http://pics.livejournal.com/poetartist/pic/0006z0c3/)

 

 

Seattle is a nice change from the unforgiving desert.  The rain rinses the dust from his skin and the clouds hide the judgmental sky behind rolling hills of gray and black.  Sam lets it wash away the ink stains and dents the pen made on his fingers, holds them up to the sky as he stands on top of the highest building, feels his mind stretch scabs over places worn thin inside him.

The city is bursting with life and coffee houses.  Sam’s mouth waters as he waits for his first cup, aware he could conjure one up in an instant, but the wait makes it that much more delicious when he finally wraps his fingers around it and inhales the aroma appreciatively.

Sam drinks five cups over the course of two hours and soaks in the energy and music in the place like he’s starving.  Then he leaves, walks up and down streets for hours, getting lost in the crowds, shuffling across sidewalks and flowing with the crowd into shops and malls, the rise and fall of his feet settling him into almost a trance.

He "meets" a lot of people.  It's almost too much with so many bodies pressed against him, so many minds wide open and chattering loudly.  It gives him a headache at first, until it gets to be so much that a wall slams closed around his mind and he's blessedly alone, truly alone for the first time in months.

It feels nice and utterly desolate.  The wall comes down not long after.

He finds a moderately priced hotel and sinks down onto the soft mattress, realizing just how stiff and sore he is as his muscles finally relax.

The dreams come back that night, and they're worse than ever.  Sam tastes the metallic tang of blood and shame in his mouth as Dean twists in agony on the rack.  Sam can see Dean's insides.

Ruby grins from behind the rack, Alastair beside her, his hands idly twirling a knife.

"You can't rewrite destiny, boy," says Alistair.

"All that potential is still inside, Dumbo.  You know you wanna give it a try."

Ruby appears next to Sam, runs her fingers through his hair, scrapes her nails across the nape of his neck.

"I could wear Jessica for you," she purrs.  "How about it, Sammy?  You wanted that sweet little piece of ass since the moment you set eyes on her.  I'll give her to you, and you can keep her as long as you want."

Sam wants to jerk away, but she holds on too tight, digs her nails into his skin.  He feels blood well up as Dean keeps screaming.

"Can't fight destiny, champ." Azazel joins the group, yellow eyes glinting in the flickering fire closing in on them.  "It's gonna be a hell of a party."

Sam wakes covered in sweat and drowning in sheets that twist around him like a prison.  He struggles for five minutes before he remembers he can just snap them away, so he does.  He’s still tired, but he’s awake.  He paces the room for a while, unwilling to leave because it’s a nice room, and he really doesn’t know where else to go right now.

So he paces, stares out the window, counts droplets that hit and pearl, then slide down the glass behind the fog his breath creates.  When it turns light again, he takes a shower, dresses, and heads out for more coffee.

He’s on his fourth cup of something with espresso and vanilla in it when an olive-skinned woman in hooker boots, tights, and a _If It’s Pretty, Fuck It.  There Is No Gay_ t-shirt plops down across from him at the table.

“Cream cake, you look awful.”

Sam blinks at her.  “Excuse me?”

“You.  You look awful, and I don’t think coffee is gonna be enough to help.” She pinches off a piece of the large cookie in her hand and pops it in her mouth, smiling sweetly at him.  “I’m Taz, friend of Freddy-girl.  She said her spidey-sense was tingling and sent me to check up on you because your emo is migrating to Canada, and now that I’m here I totally agree.”

Sam blinks again.  “It’s way too early for this crap,” he mutters.

“Funny, that’s what everyone says when I come around.  Now, you look like you could use a fun time, so let’s get going.”

Sam eyes her critically.  “You’re a friend of Fred’s?”

“She probably didn’t mention me much, I bet.  She’s still a wee bit paranoid since those necromancers tried to bind me to them.  The name’s Tazarina Reese, Taz for short; former reaper and mostly reformed criminal mastermind until I get bored.”

They shake hands and Sam finishes his coffee.  Her mind is strange in texture compared to all the others he's encountered. He gets a shiver down his spine, a muted sense of decay, earth, and a thick over-layer of crackling energy that feels like fresh snow and cinnamon.  She’s not lying about knowing Fred, so he relaxes.

  “What’s Fred up to these days?”

“Mostly?  Refereeing Thomas and his brother since Tahiti was a disaster and tracking down something mystical for a friend.  Believe me, I jumped at the chance to get away from that little nuclear situation.  Besides, I heard you were cute.”

Taz looks him up and down, a leering smile curving on her lips.  Sam flushes and pulls away from her mind as much as he can.

“Come on.”

Taz hauls him out of the chair and slips an arm through his as they walk out into the Seattle morning.

“Where exactly are we going?” he asks.

“Well, you have this cool little power that lets you go wherever you want, right?  I’d like you to pop us into Vegas.  I haven’t been in a casino in…six, seven months?  We must remedy that situation.  Oh, and I’ll be getting you drunk so your emo goes away.”

“I can't get drunk anymore, Fred knows that." And bitched about it loudly, and often.

“Oh, but cream cake, you haven’t mixed coya berries in your Jack Daniels yet.  Just you wait, I will have you tripping over air and singing horribly to Brittney Spears after just a couple shots.”

Apparently, being a reaper gives Taz all sorts of knowledge about not just Earth and humans, but the neighboring dimensions, worlds and inhabitants as well.  Sam is impressed, and very curious.

“They’re kind of relatives to the coyotillo plant that grows in Texas. I guess cross dimension pollination is possible--who knew?  Only this one causes drunkenness instead of paralysis that eventually kills you.  Of course, any normal human drinks after you and they’re looking at instant death, so don’t be swapping shots out.  Kissing mortal-kind is also out until you’ve brushed your teeth and gargled with salt, so I’ll be your designated party girl for the entirety of your first foray into drunkenness for the evening.”

Sam jumps away when she gives his ass a pinch and smiles all wide and innocent-like.

“So, Vegas?  Just pop us in somewhere along the strip.”

Sam side eyes her for a minute, not really sure if he should trust her, but so far he’s getting nothing but genuine truth from her mind and a lot of perverted thoughts that he’s not going to pursue.

“Anywhere along the strip?” He blows out a breath and tries to think of a good reason to back out.  Nothing comes to mind.  Where else does he really have to go?

“Yep, I’ll take the lead from there.”

Sam grips her tight and twists them out of Washington as another light rain begins to fall down from the heavens.

 

                                                                                                                            #

 

_Sam was alone, walking by himself out of sight of the cabin when the first full memory came back to him.  It hit him like a bolt of lightning, whiting out his vision and replacing it like a movie in his brain._

_“Hey, no peeking, squirt.  Them’s the rules.”_

_“Come on,” Sam whined.  “Can’t you just give me a hint?  And I’m not a squirt, I’m taller than you.”_

_“Yeah, yeah, we’re all aware, Jolly Green.”_

_A thumb dug into his ribs and Sam flailed around, trying to escape it and let out an undignified squeal.  Sam batted the offending hand away._

_“Jerk!  I’m not closing my eyes if you’re gonna be like that.”_

_“Eh, we’re almost there anyway.”_

_Then they were sitting in a diner booth, the cracked linoleum under their feet, the steady_ whoop-whoop _of the fan overhead doing little to soothe the swollen heat in the air.  Everything smelled like grease, exhaust and sticky soda pop.  Sweat trickled down the back of Sam’s neck, made his shirt stick to his skin._

_The light was bright around the person in front of him, and then it faded away, sharpening into a face he knew better than his own lit up with nothing more than a smile and open amusement now._

_“What are we really doing here?  We’ve eaten in a thousand places like this before.” Sam asked._

_“This is step one, Sammy,” Dean smirked.  He gave a twenty to the waitress for the food and stuffed a couple ones under his empty plate.  She brought back the change and something in a Styrofoam to-go box._

_Then they were back in the car, trees and rolling pastures flashing by like a book of still snapshots.  His bones hummed with CCR and the rise and fall of his and Dean’s voices, trading words back and forth he couldn’t remember specifics of. He just remembered that it was good; it was all good at that moment._

_Then they were sitting on the hood, the Styrofoam container balanced between them.  Sam felt like his chest was about to burst with the heavy sweet apple pie on his tongue and nobody but them for miles around.  Things had been so hard at home, with Dad moving them more and more, never letting Sam even think about putting down roots, much less get to know anyone else._

_The fights had gotten more and more vocal, Sam pushing for answers and a future he was starting to realize he would never get so long as he kept seeking his father’s approval.  He went around with a dark cloud inside his chest more often than not, knowing he couldn’t stay but not sure if leaving wouldn’t do more damage than he could imagine._

_Some days, Sam tried not to talk at all, because no matter what he said it seemed to set off another fight with Dad about something, but not talking apparently meant he was sulking and that pissed Dad off, too._   
_But that didn’t matter today.  Dad was away and it was just him and Dean and half of the best apple pie Sam had ever eaten, and he’d eaten his fair share._

_“Hey, everything’s gonna be okay, you know that, right?” Dean said.  He tapped his foot against the ground. Sam recognized the beat for Susie Q._

_“Maybe.” Sam speared the last apple slice and ate it up._

_“It’s gonna be fine,” Dean said, like he believed it down to his bones, because he probably did.  “Dad’ll come around once the summer calms down, all these hunts and the heat are messing with his head.”_

_Sam wanted to say life in general was messing with Dad’s head, but he didn’t want to ruin today.  Funny, he never had a problem keeping his brain to mouth filter in check with Dean.  Dad always found a way to unhinge it; all he had to do was be in the same room._

_“Anyway, don’t worry about Dad.  You graduate in a couple weeks and then we won’t have to worry about CPS and truancy. That’ll take a big load off us and things’ll settle down.”_

_Dean ruffled his hair and Sam bit his tongue.  The acceptance letter from Stanford rested inside his copy of_ The Grapes of Wrath, _the paper wearing at the creases from the many times he’d taken it out to make sure it was real.  It was strange; he had more courage facing down a rampaging werewolf than he did presenting a piece of paper, his greatest accomplishment, to Dean or Dad.  He kept telling himself he would tell them every night, but something always came up and he was staring up at his ceiling listening to Dean snore hours later when he remembered he never did._

_Sam wasn’t sure how Dean would react.  He knew what he hoped for, but it was hard to tell, and that scared him more than anything he’d ever come up against out in the dark._

_He had two and a half weeks left before school ended.  He would tell them, tell Dad that he wanted to save people, just not from behind a fake ID and a shotgun full of rock salt.  He liked the law school program he found on Stanford’s website, really liked the idea of being on the right side of the fence catching bad guys._

_“Good stuff, isn’t it, Sammy?” Dean smirked and stuffed their trash into a plastic bag._

_“Yeah, thanks, Dean.”_

_He would tell them the night he graduated, he decided.  He just wished he knew how it would end._

_The desert filtered back in and Sam sat up.  The memory knocked him clean on his ass, and the back of his head hurt where he hit the dirt.  His chest ached, and his throat felt swollen.  Sam hugged his knees to his chest and breathed in and out._

_When he could walk, he went back to the cabin.  Fred wasn’t there, probably out on a walk of her own, so he sat at the table and closed his eyes._

_The vase of wild flowers turned into the pie.  He was getting pretty good at that now.  Sam turned a drying petal into a fork and took a bite._

_It tasted like hope and regret and rotten disappointment under the sugary filling._

_Sam threw the pie out the back door and sat at the table as time moved on.  Fred took one look at him when she came back and knew without asking._

_“Come on,” she said.  “I’m going to tell you about the sleeping giants.”_

  

                                                                                                                 #

 

Coya berries, Sam decides, are the fucking shit.

“These are the fucking shit,” he slurs, leaning heavily on Taz’s shoulder as he takes another gulp from his glass.  The berries turn every drink he orders a funny greenish-blue color, and makes them taste crisp and tart like apple cider, only stronger.

Sam’s almost forgotten what it’s like to be drunk.  Everything seems hazy and soft as it tips and sways around him.  He feels good, really damn good.  He doesn’t remember the last time he felt like this, like everything was okay as long as he had a full glass in his hand.

The entire night has been a blur of lights, fancy cars, and the encouraging beeps and whirs of slot machines.  He’s never seen so many people all glitzed up in makeup and feathers.

“So I see,” Taz laughs and steadies him.  “Alright, big boy, what’s say you and I get you somewhere you can sit down?”

“The roof!” Sam shouts, lifting his glass.  It sloshes over his hand and he giggles, licking it off as it soaks into his shirt cuffs.  He grabs Taz with his free arm and twists them out of the fancy bar, only he sways somewhere between and they stumble and fall when they come out on the roof of the MGM.  Sam loses his glass, but he laughs and splays out, the stars blurring together like Van Gogh’s paintings.  He lifts a hand and traces them in the air.

“Okay, new rule, no more drinking and apparating.  Very bad idea,” Taz mutters and sits up.  Sam giggles again.  Everything seems so funny.  “Alright, so, this is kind of a shitty thing to do, but I figure if you’re anything like Fred then the only straight answer I’ll get is when you’re plastered all to hell, so, I wanna play twenty questions.”

“Oooh, sounds fun.  Who’s askin’ and who’s answerin’?  I used to be really, really good at this game.”

He was, too, used to spend days asking questions certain ways to see which worked on Dad and Dean.  Usually, it was to find out what kind of present he was getting when he was little.  He figured out pestering Dad with a lot of inane questions for at least an hour made him an easy target when he slipped in a real question.

Dean was harder and more observant; he usually just sat on Sam until he gave up asking.

“I’m sure you’re still the champion.”

Sam giggles, then lets his laugh taper off as he remembers.  “Nah, Dean was ‘lways better.”

“Where is Dean?”

Sam closes his eyes.  The stupid stars are making him dizzy.  “I dunno,” he shrugs.  “Been tryin’ not to be found, so I stayed away.  ‘S easier, you know?”

“No, I don’t,” Taz sat cross legged in front of him.  “Why didn’t you go see your brother like Fred told you to when you came back?”

“I did.  I did go see him.  Fred never said he had to see me back,” he points out.  Fred left some pretty big loopholes in her request, if he hadn’t been learning to be a lawyer he still would have spotted them.

Taz rolls her eyes, but Sam keeps talking.

“He was in Nebraska on some job.  I’d been gone three years, you know?  Three fucking years an’ he was still hunting.  I thought…I thought he woulda noticed, you know?  Figured he was mad when I left, but I thought he woulda called or come by or, fuck, somethin’.”

Sam throws an arm over his eyes, liking the way the cool desert air makes him shiver.  He’s too full and warm with the alcohol to consider moving, content to feel the goose bumps rise and fall on his skin.

“What if he was looking for you?” Taz asks.  “Maybe he was following a lead and took care of the job along the way.”

Sam shakes his head.  It makes his insides slosh unpleasantly.  
“No, don’t think so.  Dad threw me out, you know, when I said I’s goin’ to college.  Dean never said anythin’, though.  Not one word.  Never even came after me when I left for the bus.  I thought…  I thought he’d understand.  Always seemed to un’erstand me better’n I did, thought he’d get it.

“I’s stupid, I guess,” Sam waves his hand dismissively.  “Shouldn’ta made him choose.  Thought he’d maybe choose me anyway.  Stupid.”

Taz drops a hand on his head and cards through his hair.  He can’t remember the last time anyone did that.  It feels nice.

“That’s stupid logic and I think you know it,” Taz says, not accusingly, more like an idle comment on the weather.  “I think you’re scared of something.”

Sam snorts.

“Not scared of nothin’.  Can’t freaking die, remember?”

“I think you’ve figured out that death isn’t anything to be afraid of.  As a former reaper, I can assure you it isn’t.”

Sam shuts his mouth and sighs.  His buzz is gone now, and he feels all muddled and sluggish and more than a little sad.  His stomach isn’t too happy with him either.  Probably shouldn’t have downed so many glasses at once.

“I’m not human anymore,” he says after a while.  “Dad ‘n Dean, they hunt down evil stuff that’s not human.  I…   I don’t want them to hunt me.”

He swallows against the taste in the back of his throat and feels wetness slide down from the corners of his eyes and trickle into his ears.  At least with Stanford, Dad and Dean were just hurt and mad and that’s why they weren’t talking to him.  It was fixable, later down the line; he had faith in that.

Staying away is better for everyone, all things considered.  Sam can't end the world if he doesn't die near Dean so Dean won't sell his soul so Sam won't shack up with Ruby.  He won't lose Dean, won't need to drink demon blood, won't hunt Lillith.

Besides, with how Dad is hell bent on hunting anything remotely non-human, and with Dean not taking his side on the college issue, Sam knows Dean won't take his side for this. He doesn't want him to, really.  It's so much bigger than college, and it goes against everything Dean believes and Dad taught, everything that made them who they are.

There's no fixing it now, especially since Dean saw him disappear outside that bar.

“And where exactly is it written in stone that just because you’re not human that you’re evil?” Taz asks, pinches his forearm lightly.  “Fred’s like you.  Is she evil?”

Sam bites his lip.

“She qualifies in the morning,” he mutters.

“Yeah, but she gets nice again once she gets her damn latte.  I’m not strictly human, am I evil?”

“No,” Sam squirms.

“So what about you?  If we’re not evil, are you?”

Sam turns away, dragging his head out of her reach.

“Seriously, have you done anything that can be considered evil?  Like, I don’t know, whipping up an infant stir fry platter?  Sacrificed any virgins on full moons?  Have you been fraternizing with Donald Trump?”  
Taz pokes his side.  Sam snorts and shakes his head, feeling an unwanted smile tug at his lips.

“See, now in my book, those are some pretty ultimate evils.  So far, I think the worst you’ve done is probably cut in line at Starbucks because no one can see you do it anymore.”

Sam considers this.  It’s mostly true.

“I turned some people into animals a couple weeks ago,” he says.

“How come?”

Sam shifts on his side to get more comfortable.  Somehow, it isn't working with laying on the roof.  “One that gave me a ride tried to kill me.  The other two hunters tried the same thing.”

“I think you would get by with justifiable transmogrification or whatever for that.”

“Shut up.”

“Seriously, law boy, sounds like a good case of self-defense to me."

“I killed an entire chupacabra pack out in Mexico.”

“Did they kill people down there?”

“…yes.”

“Uh huh.  So, let me get this straight, you’re taking out stuff that’s already killed or protecting yourself.  Call me bat shit crazy, but that doesn’t really scream evil to me.  Unlucky, maybe.”

“Dad and Dean won’t see it that way,” he whispers.

“Are you one hundred percent sure of that?  ‘Cause me and Fred, we’re pretty much family and we’ve both made some less than stellar choices in the past.  So far we haven’t found anything we can’t forgive or live with anymore.”

Sam sighs and wipes at his face.  “I wish I was that sure,” he says.  Taz just cards through his hair, almost lulls him to sleep, until a question pops into his brain and wakes him back up.  “Hey.  Hey, you said you were a reaper,” he remembers.  Sam turns on his side so he can see her.

“In the flesh, baby.”

“I didn’t think reapers could be human, too,” he says.

“Believe me, I’m the first former reaper in a really, really long time that got a second chance,” she says.  “Most reapers tend to stay in their true form, but sometimes we get the chance to have a physical body.  I started out in a different body working with Fred.  She used to be a witch, before she got all demigod-ified.  She was in the undertaking business; she needed a reaper to make sure the dead moved on so hunters like you had a little less to deal with.”

“Wow,” says Sam.  Dad didn’t like witches on principle.  He wondered if he ever met Fred, if he might change his mind on that.  “That was nice of her.”

Taz chuckled.  “Anyway, this story is way too long to be told to someone who won’t even remember most of it in the morning, but long story short, I helped Fred save someone’s life and I earned the right to be human and shake off reaper duty.  I’m just thankful I was in a hot body by the time the offer came around, because now the soul’s attached.”

“So you like being human?”

“Are you kidding?  I get to eat food, man, real food!  Any time the body is hungry.  Having a heartbeat is pretty cool, too.  And sex!  I think the sex is probably the best part.  I spent something, like, two hundred years in my true form before I could possess a body and I will never go back.  Spirits can’t get it on worth shit, it’s completely unsatisfying.  Besides, now that I know I have a lifetime, it’s my goal to try out everything in the Kama Sutra before I croak.  Again.”

Sam groans.  “God, I do not need to hear this.  You would definitely get along with Dean.”

“Well, if he’s as cute as you and willing I bet we could get along for days.”

“No more talking about sex and Dean!  I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Taz doesn’t stop laughing for a few minutes, but eventually she takes pity on Sam and helps him up.

“Come on, Sam-bo, let’s get downstairs and put you to bed.  Only we’re walking, got it?  I don’t need you dumping us in the Atlantic. Otherwise, my lifelong goal will never be achieved and I’ll haunt your ass and talk about all the different kinds of sex I’m not having twenty-four hours a day until I drive you bonkers.”

Sam nods. He feels way too tired to try doing anything else, and he really just wants those awful images out of his head before he throws up.

In the room, Taz pushes him onto the bed and disappears into the bathroom.  Sam feels too heavy to move much, and his mind is full and buzzing unpleasantly with everything that’s been said.

He groans and reaches for his pack.  Inside is a postcard he picked up in some little hole in the wall town with a black and white picture of a house and a yard.  Sam didn’t think too hard about why he picked it up at the time, but he looks at it now and thinks he knows.  The house is kind of broken down, with chipping paint and a falling-down fence, a couple shutters missing.

It reminds him of the places they used to stay all across the country, little rundown homes with spotty electricity, little or no hot water and paper thin walls.  As a teen, he hated those places, especially when he went to the homes of other kids.  Most never contended with cockroaches and spiders or, a few times when money was tight, hookers and their clients getting down to business next door when he was studying for his chem exam.

It wasn’t always like that, of course.  Dad had tried to get nice places when he had the money.  Looking back, Sam has to admit that the grungy places were often only when things were bad financially, which wasn’t as often as he used to think it was. Funny, it was never that clear at the time.

Sam gets the marker and turns the postcard over.  His mind is swimming and tired, all his thoughts jumbled together.  He wonders if someone shook his head like a snow globe, and that’s why he feels like this.

 _I’m sorry,_ he scrawls on the back of the card, the letters bulky and uneven.  Sam frowns, wishes he was sober enough to make his penmanship better.  That’s important.  _I wish I could come home._

He chews on his lip, but that’s really the crux of it all, everything he wants to say to his brother.  He’s getting kind of spotty on everything Taz said to him, but he’s still sure that going back will never be an option.  He feels guilty enough being what he is; he couldn’t bear Dean’s face, the betrayal that would probably be there, if Sam ever had to tell him exactly what he was or what he's capable of.

Sam’s thoughts spin away to that afternoon, a couple weeks before graduation.  Dean taking him for pie was their private celebration for Sam completing school, something Dad didn’t really acknowledge.  Dean got that it was always important to him, but Sam realized then, even if he didn’t admit it, that Dean didn’t want to see that Sam wanted something more.

And Sam, well, Sam has to admit now that some selfish part of him wanted to see Dean’s reaction when he finally brought it out.  It had to do with finally breaking free of Dean’s shadow, showing them both he wasn’t just a little brother, the younger son, the one that never measured up.

Sam kept his mouth shut, and that afternoon remained something golden and sweet with an undercurrent of bitter regret.

Sam realizes he’s crying again and he rolls his eyes.  It’s done and gone, over.  But it doesn’t feel like it.  
He looks back at the postcard.  Dean should know, he thinks.  He owes him an apology, even if it is as piss-poor as this one is.

Sam closed his eyes and concentrates on Dean.  It takes a few minutes, but he holds a clear image of his brother in his head and wills the card to go to him.  For a minute, the card feels heavier, he hears the short ring of an alarm clock that cuts off mid sound, and he swears he smells dough and cinnamon, but then it's gone.

By the time Taz comes out of the bathroom, Sam is asleep and his hands are empty.

 

                                                                                                                            #

 

His dreams are confusing and he doesn’t remember them in the morning.  He doesn’t remember a whole lot, actually, until he plucks the pink sticky note from his forehead and realizes Taz is nowhere to be found.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/poetartist/pic/000706eq/)

Bits and pieces start coming back to him and Sam sighs, hangs his head, and puts the note in his bag with the post cards.  She’s right about one thing--he really does smell like week old ass.

Sam looks around the room and realizes he doesn’t remember getting there.  He hopes he zapped them right down on the first try and no one got splinched or changed in any way.

“I’m never drinking those berries again,” he says to the empty room.

It’s an empty promise, but it makes him feel a little bit better.  There’s no alarm clock, which he finds strange.  What kind of hotel room doesn’t have an alarm?  But the TV tells him it’s after one in the afternoon.  Sam grimaces, yawns, and heads to the bathroom to take that shower.

He takes several post cards from Vegas and heads over to the east coast, thinks the fresh sea air will do him some good, maybe clear the lingering hangover and magically present him with a plan of action.  
All the salty air does is aggravate his head and stuff up his nose, so Sam takes a bus as far as he can to Pennsylvania and then another out to Missouri.

Missouri is full of corn ready for the fall harvest, and the air tastes like hard work and decaying leaves.  He remembers hating the state as a child.  When he finished his books and Dean didn’t want to be bothered, corn became his number one nemesis because it never, ever changed as the Impala sped on by.

There were a surprising number of jobs in Missouri.  Sam had a theory that centered on angry spirits pissed about dying somewhere so goddamn boring.

Sam bums around for a couple days, helps out a couple families hit hard by the economic crunch, but it doesn’t ease the restlessness inside him.

Finally, he has to call himself on his own stupidity, and starts trying to track down Dean.  Even if he doesn't talk to him, he needs to see him, at least for the sake of his sanity.  That gaping hole inside has just gotten bigger and deeper since Mexico.

If Taz were there, he’s pretty sure she would have rolled her eyes and slapped him upside the head.  Fred would have just broken his nose, so he’s equally glad neither of them are there to see his pathetic procrastination.

It takes him ten minutes to track the GPS in his phone and two hours to drive to the town and find the motel.  He still can’t believe they are so close.  He’s expecting the world to come crashing down on his head when he sees the Impala parked in front of room 28.

Dad is keeping her in good condition; he can tell it’s been only hours since the car had a brief wash ‘n shine.  She gleams like a polished black diamond, her curves and angles accented by the dim streetlight to the right.

Sam thought his chest hurt before, but it’s nothing compared to now.  It feels like some alien creature is in his chest using his insides like a scratching post.  Sam had never quite taken to cars like Dean, but the Impala is –was- home, plain and simple.  He grew up in the backseat and learned everything from his ABC’s to suture stitches there.

Sam hesitates in the shadows near the edge of the parking lot.  It’s four in the morning, and the motel room is dark.  Popping right in would be as smart as bathing in blood and jumping in a shark tank.  He’d end up with more holes than body, and that would be a bitch to deal with on top of, you know, actually going home.  
Sam sighs and runs a hand through his hair, stays in the shadows so he can pace in peace in the trees on the edge of the asphalt.  He’s actually doing this, then.  Boy this is…it’s gonna suck monkey balls.

He’s still probably gonna end up a block of human Swiss cheese.

Sam stays there for a couple hours, just pacing and watching the door.  He doesn’t even realize how much time passes until the first rays of light cut through the air.

“Time to man up,” Sam says to himself.  He wonders if he should bring coffee with him, if it would even be appreciated.

“Think again, Winchester.”

Sam catches a brief glance of Crete’s pissed off face, then a sharp pain in his side, like a needle.  He sways as his fingers rip at the dart in his side.

Then it all turns sideways and he can’t feel anything anymore.

 

                                                                                                                    #

 

_“So let me get this straight.  This is basically a storage locker for things that caused too much trouble wherever they came from, so some god decided to turn them into scenery and keep them here until…whenever?”_

_Fred shrugged.  “That’s what I understand of it.”_

_“Huh.  That must suck for them.”_

_Fred snorted and kicked at a rock.  It went skidding out over the cracked ground, then turned into a rusty red bird that took off into the sky, disappeared among the shifting red and purple light._

_“What did that one do?” Sam asked, pointed at the Sleeping Woman.  Of the few giants Fred showed him, she looked the most peaceful, the most undeserving of eternal punishment by geological crumbling._

_“Something unforgivable, but completely understandable,” she said.  It was the only time he ever heard her voice sound that soft.  “I didn’t really bring you out here for story time, Sam.”_

_They stopped in the shadow of the giant hand reaching out of the earth towards the horizon.  Cool air nipped at his exposed skin, goose bumps rising on his skin._

_“Why then?”_

_“Because I’m leaving.”_

_Sam was glad they stopped.  If he’d been walking he would have lost his footing and landed smack on his face._

_“What?  Why?”_

_Fred sighed and met his eyes.  “Look, I’m here because my introduction to this whole new life was pretty fucking traumatic and I didn’t have anyone to show me the way.  I was on earth for the whole shebang, and I coulda done a lot of damage under slightly different circumstances.  Thing is, you don’t need me to help like that anymore.”_

_“But…what am I going to do?  I can’t stay here,” he said, mind tripping over itself with too many thoughts.  He thought they were friends, almost like family; family didn’t leave each other behind._

_Well, better people didn’t, his mind whispered._

_“You’re strong enough to cross back over.  I’ve been watching you. You’re getting your memories back, it’s showing more and more every minute, and you’ve got more control over your mind.  Once you get back you’ll be stable enough to go to your family.”_

_And that was root of it.  Sam had been getting his memories back.  The first one triggered another, and another and another, all along their walk while Fred talked and Sam listened with half his brain while the other ran through everything that came back.  They walked for a long time, probably months in earth-time.  He wasn’t even sure which direction the cabin was in anymore._

_All those memories led him to one conclusion: whether he went back or stayed, he’d never get to go home, not really.  If he thought Dad and Dean were pissed about college?  It would be nothing compared to showing up with a brand new set of abilities and questionable humanity._

_He didn’t think his stomach would ever stop being sick._

_“We’ve been here four years, or close enough, Sam.  I’ve got a little brother back home. He’s doing okay, but I need to get back to him now.  You’ll always be family to me, and Thomas, too, whenever you get a chance to meet him.  You ever need us and we’ll be there.  But right now, it’s time for you to make your own way back.”_

_Sam swallowed against the emotions rising inside him.  It felt almost like the night he left for Stanford, so alone and betrayed.  He looked at her and saw what she was doing for what it was, an amicable parting with a chance to meet up later on._

_So, not really family, not the way he was used to thinking of it, more like second or third cousins.  Shared blood, or powers, whatever, but not close enough to stick around for._

_“You’ve been going back to earth on your walks, haven’t you?” he asked._

_“Yeah.  Can’t leave the kid alone for very long. The strangest kinds of trouble like to follow him around.  Besides, I’ve been kind of a shitty sister for a while.  Have to make up for that every chance I get.”_

_Fred smiled a little, absently twisted the ring she wore around her neck._

_Sam got it, kind of, but he was still too wrapped up in fear and terrible possibilities to feel anything much beyond abandonment from the only person that could understand.  Words bubbled up and got trapped behind his tongue; it was all he could do to breathe without trying to force them out in any kind of form that made sense._

_“This isn’t fair, I get that, but it’s how it needs to be,” Fred dropped the ring and stood back up.  She had her serious teacher face back on.  “What we are now, we’re the first of our kind in a really long time.  You can always find me and Thomas if you try hard enough, but you need to go through your own gauntlet to get back home first._

_“He’s gonna come see you tonight and explain some things.  You’ll get the rest of your answers, Sam.  Once you do and you get back home, you go see your brother.  I expect after all these years, you’re gonna have some explaining to do, but trust me, it’s gonna be worth it.”_

_Fred’s teacher face melted away and she gave him a lopsided grin.  Then she was just gone._

_Sam didn’t go back to the cabin for a long time.  When he found his way back, he found it gone, too, like it was never there at all._

 

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/poetartist/pic/00073f3x/)


	3. Third Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has trouble breathing.

 [](http://pics.livejournal.com/poetartist/pic/00071ssp/)  
  
  
  
  
Sam has trouble breathing.  Everything in his body feels so heavy, like he’s got an elephant sitting on his chest and pressing him into the earth.  Only, the lines of weight are thin, crisscrossing his body like a web.  He smells candle wax, cheap chalk, and a sickly sweet smoke wafting through the air.  Someone is burning coya berries and they’re chanting somewhere behind his head.  
  
Sam doesn’t risk opening his eyes again.  When he tried upon waking, everything shook and swam, and laying as he was on a hard floor with no way to move, he didn’t think choking on his vomit would help matters any.  
  
“Morning, Winchester.  So glad you could join us,” Nivens says to his right.  
  
“What are you doing?” Sam croaks.  He can still feel the concentrated coya juice flooding his bloodstream, but it’s mixed with something else. He can’t pinpoint what.  This is way worse than being drunk, and he’s scared for a minute that it will keep him paralyzed permanently.  
  
“Even monsters can be bought if their own kind fuck them over,” said Crete.  “Especially gods.”  
  
“Except you’re not a god, not really, are you?"  
  
Nivens voice is close to his ear.  Something sharp drags across the skin of Sam’s arm, soft, delicate, then hard and tearing as it digs and twists until it breaks skin and keeps going.  Sam screams.  
  
“No,” Nivens continues, pushing the object, probably a knife, down until it punches through the other side and bites into the floor.  “You’re some unnatural hybrid.  I guess all that power was too much to pass up, wasn’t it?  Couldn’t resist, and now look at you.  All that evil runnin’ through your veins, messin’ with your mind, poisoning whatever is left of who you used to be.  Sad little tragedy, ‘specially considering what kind of a family you came from.”  
  
“You leave them out of this,” Sam growls, shaking from head to toe.  He pries his eyes open. The candlelight stabs at them, but he catches Nivens moving around to his other side.  “Don’t you dare-“  
  
“Why do you think we’re taking care of this, Sam?  Hunting is a hard job, and there’s no need to rub salt in the wounds by having someone take out their own family.  Your daddy and brother never have to know.”  
Crete closes the book he’s holding and picks up some kind of tool. It’s long, thin and sharp.  
  
Sam swallows down bile as he dips it into a bowl of dark liquid, moves to Nivens, and holds it out to him.  
“You’re past saving, Winchester.” Nivens takes the tool and positions it over Sam’s calf.  “But you’re not past usefulness.  Once we’re satisfied punishing you for Minnesota, you’re going to obey like a good dog and help us with the hunt.”  
  
“Why don’t you just kill me?” Sam screams at him as Crete hands him a hammer.  
  
Nivens laughs.  “We know we can’t kill you, Winchester.  Besides, a bloodhound on steroids bound by an unbreakable leash?  Think of it as atonement for all the evil you’ve done, and prevention for everything you would have gone on to do.”  
  
Sam wants to pass out as Nivens raises the hammer and brings it down.  His system overloads on pain, nerves firing up and down his body, spine arching, pressing against the invisible bonds.  He thrashes as much as he can.  He’s not even thinking anymore, just reacting as the pain ebbs and flows, spikes and settles before it starts again.  
  
The smoke clogs his lungs, coats his throat and teeth and he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the taste of those berries mixed with whatever makes it taste like tar and metal.  
  
He’s babbling, can hear himself screaming for help, but his mouth has a mind of its own and he isn’t sure what he’s saying.  It doesn’t matter. It’s not helping.  No one is coming, and they aren’t stopping.  
  
And then, he feels something change.  Something comes loose and the binds lessen, like rope coming uncoiled.  Sam reacts, forcing out power from his fingers.  Windows come open and wind whips around the room with the force of a mini tornado.  Candles blow out, papers scatter, someone starts yelling, things shatter.  
  
Sam feels for the knife in his arm. He grips the handle and yanks it out.  A wordless scream tears his throat; he feels sticky wetness drench his side.  He still can’t pass out, even with black spots dancing in his eyes and rushing in his ears.  It’s not going to end until he gets away, so he goes for the thing in his leg.  
It takes him three pulls to finally get it out.  When he does, he can’t hear his own voice anymore, can’t hear anything beyond the rushing noise in his head, can’t feel anything but raw fire burning up every nerve in his body.  
  
Sam tosses the thing as far away as he can, rolls himself over, and starts crawling.  Muscles tremble and shake as he drags himself across the dusty floor.  Dimly, he feels the wood splinter under his hands; little slivers barely there inching under his fingernails as they scrape to find purchase.  He crawls past another body, someone that looks human, but he can sense wasn’t.  It’s not Fred and doesn’t look young enough to be Thomas.  
  
It takes a moment, and then he realizes it’s the jackass from Minnesota, and without his illusion, Sam can see past the outside and into the coiling spirit trapped in the dying flesh.  It’s huge, bigger than the body it inhabits, and it’s slowly smothering to death.  
  
Sam keeps crawling.  
  
The farther he gets from the circle the more the binding spells slips away, feeling like chains lifting, but his body is failing.  He won’t die, but he can’t stay here. That thought fires across the spastic neurons in his skull like fucking Christmas lights.  He needs a safe place, somewhere to rest.  
  
Somewhere far away.  
  
Sam sobs and counts in his head.  Stretch, grip, pull.  Stretch, grip, pull.  One, two, three.  Four, five, six.  It’s slow going, but he sees an open doorway in front of him, mere feet away.  He can make it.  
  
Then a hand closes around his shoulder and Sam loses it.  No way is he going back to that hell.  He fights with what pathetic strength he has left, twisting, turning, moving with all his might.  The grip slips, surprised, and he hears a voice shouting at him. Another hand closes on his side, bunches up the shirt material.  
  
Sam’s not going to go down again.  He surges forward out of the grip, goes for the open door, the humid night air tantalizingly close.  
  
Memories of the cabin flit through his misfiring brain and he holds onto their image tight.  Blood trickles from his nose and he gasps, opens his mind, bidding a doorway into being.  He feels the fibers separating the worlds pull apart slow, hesitant, smells the empty desert thick and rich as the airs mingle.  
  
Sam closes his eyes and puts everything into shooting him through.  _Take me back, take me back,_ he pleads.  
  
His strength falters. He doesn’t have the juice.  The fibers slip from his grasp, close up without him, and snap back like a rubber band.  Sam flies backward and rolls onto his back. He stares up at dusty rafters with fast spreading despair flooding every inch of him.  
  
A face appears above him. It looks bone-deep familiar and blurry, winking in and out of sight as black spots fill his vision again.  
  
It’s not possible, of course, and Sam breaks inside, a million pieces flying everywhere.  He curls in on himself, no fight left.  He tried so hard, but isn’t that how it goes?  Poor, pathetic, doomed little Sammy, always trying but never succeeding.  Always a failure, forever and ever.  
  
Hands ghost over him, and he thinks he hears desperate pleading, imagines someone saying, _“Sammy, hold on, please.”_  
  
It’s nice, and Sam lets go.

                                                                                                                            #

  
  
 _Sam knew the moment he showed up.  All those months gave him the time to get in tune with the desert, with the ebb and flow of its spirit or essence, whatever you want to call it.  He could tell when the things were close, though out of sight, and he knew when Fred was away on her walks.  He even knew when something new had pushed its way up through the soil in the vicinity of the cabin._  
  
 _This felt different, a shift in the air that brought a feeling of sunshine and ripe lime, the feeling of eyes and a chill on his skin.  Somewhere in his mind, he knew this person was male- at the moment- as well as something beyond gender._  
  
 _A shadow fell over him a couple minutes later, but Sam stayed where he was on the ground and watched the sky revolve around the Shadowlands._  
  
 _“You’re coming along great, pup.  Fred did good.”_  
  
 _Sam looked up at the newcomer as he squatted a few feet away.  The man wasn’t really a man, but he looked like one.  It was strange. Sam could see the shape he was in; the long hair tied back, the leather chaps and vest most motorcycle riders wore, and the biker boots.  He had a grin on his face and smelled like tequila and salt.   That image was clear, but Sam sensed another shape behind that form, something much bigger, something incredibly old and unpredictable._  
  
 _“Who are you?” Sam demanded.  Inside, his heart sped up, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.  The man had predator eyes, he realized._  
  
 _“Got a lot of names, kiddo.  Most call me Coyote, though.”_  
  
 _“Coyote?  What, the god?”_  
  
 _Coyote shrugged.  “Fred said you had a few questions for me.  I’ve got a few answers.  First, though, what do you remember of what happened?”_  
  
 _Sam was still reeling from the flippant comment, but it made sense.  It would take something powerful to change him like it had.  His mind snapped through the memories like flipping through a scrapbook._  
  
 _“I remember the warehouse,” he frowned.  “I went there hunting something.  Something taking people.  You were there.”_  
  
 _He remembered that part as clear as though it just happened: walking into the abandoned bookstore, a silver knife in one hand and a flashlight in the other.  He thought it was something simple, a type of ghoul nabbing people for snacks.  What he found instead was a powerful sorcerer and a trapped Coyote that couldn’t move._  
  
 _The missing people were merely filters; set up to take the brunt of Coyote’s power while the sorcerer drained it from him and transferred it to himself.  Sam had made a noise and attracted the sorcerer’s attention.  His memory went murky at that point, and the next thing he knew the silver knife was in his gut and the sorcerer had dragged him to the circle to replace the last victim._  
  
 _“The sorcerer smudged the symbols when he was getting me ready and you got free.  You fought and killed him.”_  
  
 _But it wasn’t soon enough to help Sam.  He’d felt cracked open, bleeding from his gut while lightning hot energy coursed through him without check.  He remembered shaking from head to toe, hands clasped over his middle, trying in vain to hold himself together._  
  
 _“You remember enough, then,” Coyote watched him without blinking, like he could stare at Sam and see inside his head, inside his very soul.  Sam fidgeted, then Coyote nodded.  “What you decide to do with what I’ve given is up to you, but there are rules, natural orders.  Fuck with the order and it’ll hit you back.  You’re one of mine, now, and since everything has a purpose yours will probably be affected now because of me.”_  
  
 _“I don’t get it,” Sam said._  
  
 _“If you wanna get technical, you’re my kid. Trickster blood, trickster power.  Call it a ripple effect but it affects your natural order from here on out.”_  
  
 _Coyote conjured a stick and began drawing in the sand.  Despite himself, Sam shifted closer to see._  
 _“When you go back you’re gonna feel the pull to do things. You’ll feel things shifting inside--it’ll be you figuring out your new path.  Go with them.  If you resist, you’ll fuck up your order and just cause yourself heartache.”_  
  
 _The picture was a spiral slowly rolling out.  Sam found Coyote’s movement in drawing it almost hypnotic._  
  
 _“What kind of things do I have to do?” Sam shook himself and looked away._  
  
 _“You’ll know when you get back.”_  
  
 _“I don’t want to kill anyone.  Anyone human.”_  
  
 _Coyote laughed, it came out as an amused bark._  
  
 _“Then don’t, kid.  This ain’t that type of gig.”_  
  
 _“Then what is it?” he demanded.  “I’ve lost four years of my life becoming this, whatever I am now.  And now when I go back, I’m gonna be pulled into doing things.  How am I supposed to feel about being some puppet on a string?”_  
  
 _Coyote met him with a calm gaze.  “You said yes, remember?”_  
  
 _Sam bit down on the words that wanted to come tumbling out.  Tricked.  Accident.  I take it back.  I never wanted this._  
  
 _None of it was technically true, and that was all that stopped him from opening his mouth to give Coyote a piece of his mind.  He had said yes. He’d made an impossible choice with fear drowning his heart.  At eighteen years old, no one should have to choose between death of not just the body, but the soul, or to bind themselves to a creature and become something caught between worlds._  
  
 _“You’re only a puppet if you let yourself be.  You’ve always had work to do, Sam, this just changes the tools you use to get it done.  You set the path you take, and this?  It’s nothing to be afraid of.”_  
  
 _Only, it was everything to be afraid of and Sam knew it deep in his bones, the same way he knew the look of the December sky in every corner of the US and that monsters and nightmares could be purged with salt and iron and the right Latin phrase._  
  
 _He knew it like he knew Dad would never rest until Sam was put down, if he ever found out what Sam had become.  Like he knew it would rip Dean apart, even though he would follow Dad’s orders._  
  
 _Because a monster is a monster is a monster._  
  
 _And there was nothing he could do about it._  
  
 _“I’m gonna be hunted when I go back if anyone ever finds out.”_  
  
 _“Everyone usually is at one time or another,” he said. It was definitely nothing new to him.  “They can’t kill you.”_  
  
 _Coyote put the stick down and it disappeared.  Sam glanced down and found the spiral accompanied by a small coyote, Kokopelli, and a stick figure man with a bow.  As Sam stared, the image solidified into clay and the figures began to move, making their way through the spiral.  Sam thought he heard the faint notes of a song and the rumble of a car._  
  
 _“Almost everything will die eventually, even you.  You will be hunted, but they won’t be able to kill you as you are.  I keep that secret myself.”_  
  
 _Sam’s head felt full, heavy; he couldn’t take his eyes away from the figures on the ground.  “What secret?”_  
  
 _“If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that humans do better when the question of their ending remains just a question.  You lot tend to live more fully in the face of the unknown.  And you have a lot of living to do, Sam Winchester.”_  
  
 _Coyote stood and brushed the sand from his knees.  He offered Sam a hand and Sam took it._  
  
 _“I’m glad you said yes,” he said, looking up at the sky.  Two stars fell in a twin arc, leaving burning trails in their wake before they disappeared into the desert.  “Not just because it saved me, but because in time, it will save you.”_  
  
 _“I don’t understand how that’s possible.  If anything, it damned me.”_  
  
 _Coyote’s mouth quirked up.  “Damnation is all in the perception. Nothing is ever a clear-cut highway or stairway; there’s thousands of worlds existing between them.  You’ll see what I mean someday._ _Now, Fred said you were ready to get back.  She’s confident you can make it, said you’ve learned everything you can here, and that you’re well on your way.  I tend to trust her judgment on this, so I’ll give you your gauntlet.”_  
  
 _Images from his readings on Native American culture flashed through his mind, of running a line of Natives brandishing clubs and switches, of captured prisoners trying to dodge their swings and keep going until they cleared them so they could join the tribe.  Reading those passages gave him nightmares as a child, and he used to wonder how they did it, how those captured whites swallowed their fear and just ran.  He’d asked Dean about it, and once his brother found out that was the source of the nightmares that book disappeared._  
  
 _“Walk out into the desert,” Coyote said.  “Keep going until it feels right to stop.  Then imagine where you want to come out on earth.”_  
  
 _“That’s it?” Sam asked after a moment of silence when Coyote didn’t continue._  
  
 _Coyote grinned, and then he was gone.  Sam let out a yell of frustration.  This was worse than trying to get a secret out of Dean.  At least Dean could be broken down with leverage if his prized cassettes or a girl’s phone number was at stake._  
  
 _Sam ran a hand over his face, let out every creative curse he ever heard, and stalked off into the desert._  
 _He walked for a long time, and finally anger gave way to thought as he turned Coyote’s words over in his head.  Eventually, he came to a large expanse of open flat ground he’d never been to before.  There was just sand and the occasional cactus and sage bush, like a hollow carved out of the world, a void waiting to be filled._  
  
 _Sam stopped and centered himself. It took longer than usual. He imagined where he wanted to come out on earth.  That was actually kind of hard.  Sam didn’t have a home or a permanent address.  He’d seen more places, houses, and towns than anyone he’d ever known, all of them scattered over thousands of miles of highway and back roads.  None of them meant anything to him, none of them held anything special._  
  
 _The longest he ever stayed in one place was Stanford, and he wouldn’t go back there if the world was at stake.  His mind still shied away from those memories.  He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to look at them objectively._  
  
 _The wind picked up, swirling around him for the first time since he’d woken up with no memories in the middle of the ritual circle.  Sam swayed with it, didn’t know if it was real or imagined when he smelled leather and gun oil on the air._  
  
 _Sam’s insides clenched as he thought of the Impala: her leather seats, bits of trash and dirt on the floorboards.  He imagined the way she felt when she was roaring down the road, the windows down, the radio on, the hard contours of her dash his knees always banged against once he shot up in height._  
  
 _When everything changed, Sam wasn’t ready.  That always seemed to be the case, only this time he felt himself come apart piece by piece, stripped down past the cellular level, but it didn’t hurt.  It happened too quickly to hurt, although coming back together kind of tickled as everything slid into place._  
  
 _Sam did a full body shudder and his eyes flew open, hands patting down his chest, feeling for anything missing, but he was whole.  Sam was whole and sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala in the parking lot of the Lazy W Motel._  
  
 _Shaky fingers opened the door and Sam stumbled out, knees weak as he looked skyward and picked out the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, and all the other constellations he learned as a child.  They looked so odd and out of place, like something from a dream he once had where everything was backward and upside down._  
 _Sam felt a hysterical laugh build up in his chest and crawl up his throat.  He clamped a hand over his mouth before too much noise escaped.  He was back.  He was really back._  
  
 _Then the doubt set in.  Coyote and Fred both acted like the gauntlet was some huge thing, that getting back was difficult.  It took concentration, he had to admit, and it felt weird.  Hell, his body still felt unsure of itself, like a sailor setting foot on solid ground for the first time in years, but Sam still expected something to start hurting and it didn’t._  
  
 _Huh.  It was cliché and adolescent of him, but the only thing that came to mind was ‘lame’._  
  
 _Sam waited in the Impala until sunrise, watched it break over the horizon and drank it in like rare vintage wine.  He’d forgotten how many colors it brought to life._  
  
 _Dean ventured out of the room around eight; a cigarette hanging from his lip, stubble on his cheeks, and new lines around his eyes.  Sam watched from the park across the road, his body that of someone his age but shorter and red-haired, idly bouncing a basketball one handed._  
  
 _Dean looked…old.  Even across the street, Sam could see it in the way he moved, the way he looked around.  Sam's stomach cramped and he walked across the street, shedding the illusion with each step, not even thinking of anything but_ home _._  
  
 _Then the door across from Dean’s opened and Dad stepped out, tugged on his coat, concealed the .45 in the underarm holster, a fake badge clipped to his belt._  
  
 _He was too far away to hear what they were saying and the illusion snapped back to full before he could even think about it.  He ducked behind a beat up Chevy truck and stuffed his fist into his mouth as too much of everything wanted to come spilling out.  He chanced a peek around the front.  Dean was standing there, watching Dad drive away as he lit a new cigarette with the end of his old one._  
  
 _Sam drew his knees up under him and just watched.  Dean was staring off into space, movements mechanical; he inhaled the smoke like it was nothing.  Sam wondered when he picked up the habit, and why Dad hadn’t kicked his ass until he quit._  
  
 _Sam slowly stood up, wondering if he could actually do it, actually talk to Dean.  He wanted to, God, he wanted to.  He wanted to know about the new scars on his arm, the cigarettes; he wanted to know if Dean ever called, if he even knew Sam had been gone._  
  
 _But then he remembered and he stopped._  
  
 _The vision washed over him again like it had the first time, chilled his blood, set his bones on fire, and he felt the world slip out from under him._  
  
 _When the world came back, he was flat on his back in the parking lot and Dean was nowhere around.  The only thing Sam could think through his shaking and tears was that Dean would go to hell if Sam ever came back home.  Dad would die first, Sam would screw up, Dean would try to fix it, and Dean would go to hell._  
 _Sam got shakily to his feet.  He could feel Dean; inside the motel room, he was getting ready for the day. He had the TV on and another cigarette in his mouth.  He was preparing to go on a hunt, gathering weapons, sharpening knives, counting bullets._  
  
 _Dean was fine.  He was right where he needed to be._  
  
 _Sam turned on his heel and walked away._  


                                                                                                                                #  
  
  
Fever courses under Sam’s skin, burning his blood, bubbling his skin, or so it feels like, anyway.  He shivers and goes from hot to cold and back again, blacks out, comes back, hallucinates.  
  
He’s pretty sure the oversized Chihuahua in the corner isn’t supposed to be there, but he’s not so certain about Mickey Mouse.  That fucker was possessed; he’s pretty sure it could have followed him.  
  
He’s forgotten how much he hates fevers.  Always had trouble with his, trouble with seeing things that weren’t there.  They make him cry too easy, turn him into a weepy child wanting comfort when there’s little to spare.  
  
At least his present hallucinations are nice, Mickey excluded, because he doesn’t like Disney anymore.  They bring him water, cool his skin, even hum songs he knows all the words to because Dean played them over and over and over until Sam used to fantasize about piling them together on the concrete, anointing them with gasoline, and dropping a match on the offending plastic.  
  
He’s glad to hear it now, though.  It makes him feel less alone.  
  
“Come on, Sammy, everything’s gonna be fine.”  
  
Sure, that’s a nice thought.  
  
Something cool ghosts over his skin, takes away the sweat, kills the heat for a few blissful seconds.  Then the heat is back, cooking him alive, and Sam lets it take him away, back into his head where shadows are fluid like water and shapes turn inside out and upside down and the dish ran away with the spoon.  
  
[](http://pics.livejournal.com/poetartist/pic/000728g0/)  
  
  
Okay, so, Sam’s pretty sure his screws are a little loose.  In fact, he’d go so far as to say that his screws and marbles are all completely detached and mixed up in a paper bag that’s been tossed into a busy street in the middle of an earthquake.  Between the binding mixture, lowered immunity because of said mixture, and whatever drugs the hospital is pumping him with, Sam’s brain is pretty much scrambled, baked, and smeared on the wall like a child’s finger painting.  
  
“Dude, thank God you never wanted to try pot when you were a kid,” a six foot tall saguaro says as it towers over him.  He thinks it might be a nice cactus; it hasn’t tried to kill him yet.  “I can only handle this once.”  
  
“Drugs are bad.”  
  
Very, very bad.  Sam didn’t remember ever feeling like this before, like he was completely detached from everything.  He knows parts of him should be hurting; he can feel the bandages, can sense the wounds hidden beneath stretch and pull when he moves certain ways, but it’s all distant.  He should be glad, but he doesn’t like it.  It feels like he isn’t holding on tight enough while the world is spinning.  Any moment he can let go and float away, and he’d never get back again.  
  
He can’t go away again.  
  
“Yes, very bad, they make you even weirder than normal.”  The saguaro pats his cheek a little rough.  Strangely, Sam doesn’t feel any spines.  
  
“Not weird,” Sam huffs.  Stupid cactus.  
  
The saguaro laughs.  “Dude, you are totally weird, you called me Mickey for three days straight and kept trying to exorcise me.  I’m not sure if I should be insulted or not.”  
  
Sam frowns.  
  
“I don’t like Disney.”  
  
“You don't say.”  
  
“Florida sucks, too.”  
  
“I’ll take your word on that.”  
  
Sam worries at the blanket beneath his fingers.  It’s too scratchy and sterilized to be comfortable.  
“Come on, lay back down.  Your eyes are starting to droop.”  
  
Sam shakes his head.  
  
“It’s okay to sleep, man.  I promise you’ll feel a hundred percent better when you wake up.  Maybe you’ll even be coherent when Emma comes back in.  I gotta tell you, if you had to be laid up anywhere, this is the place.  They have the hottest nurses.”  
  
“No,” Sam stubbornly opens his eyes wide.  “Not going back there.  Not dreaming again.”  
  
The cactus moved closer, grips Sam’s shoulder, and rubs comforting circles there.  
  
“Hey, it’s okay.  What are you dreaming about?”  
  
“Bad stuff,” Sam’s tired eyes close without his permission.  He can feel exhaustion running thick in his blood, but he can’t give in, not again.  His eyes feel puffy and gritty, like he’s been crying.  He probably was, he thinks.  
  
“What bad stuff?”  
  
Sam pries his eyes open, blinks away the blur.  
  
“Keep seeing it all.  The future.  I messed up so-so bad, and I can’t stop any of it.  I try, I really, really try.”  
Damn it, there he goes again.  Great, fat tears push out of his eyes, they burn and he wishes he could stop it.  A sob claws up his throat.  
  
“I can’t get it right, though.  Dean still goes to hell and I can’t get him out.  The screaming is so loud.”  
  
The taunting is, too.  Maybe it’s the drugs making it worse, but all the demons in the future keep teasing him, their eyes yawning pits threatening to swallow him up, drag him down, all the way to hell.  He can taste the blood in the dreams; it’s always in his mouth, the harsh metallic tang and the bitter sulfur scratching down his throat and into his veins.  
  
“Hey, hey, look at me.” The cactus shakes him, brings him back.  “Listen to me close, okay?  Whatever you’re dreaming about, it’s just a dream. None of it’s real-“  
  
“But it _will_ be,” Sam insists.  “That’s the whole point.”  
  
“Nothing is set in stone.  Nothing, okay?” The cactus grips both his shoulders, digs in just enough to hurt a bit, to keep him grounded.  “I promise you that, okay?  Sam, tell me you understand what I’m saying.”  
  
“I understand,” he says, even though he really doesn’t.  
  
“Good, because nothing bad is going to happen to you while I’m around.”  
  
Sam rubs at his eyes, wishes he wasn’t such a cry baby.  The cactus chuckles.  
  
“Hey, you wouldn’t be Sam if you weren’t such a girl.”  
  
Sam tries to glare at the cactus, but there’s not much heat behind it and he ruins it anyway by yawning.  
  
“I’m tired,” he says.  He sounds petulant even to his own ears.  
  
“Go to sleep, then.  I’ll wake you up if the nightmares come back.”  
  
“You’ll stay?”  
  
“Dude, what else am I gonna do?”  
  
Sam thinks about that.  It’s getting harder, though.  The fuzzy spinning-too-fast-about-to-let-go feeling is getting stronger.  
  
“I don’t know.  What do saguaros usually do?”  
  
There’s a pause.  
  
“Say what?”  
  
Sam yawns again and feels his entire jaw pop.  He can’t remember if that’s a good thing or not.  
  
“You’re a nice cactus,” he murmurs as hands guide him to lay down.  The world slips sideways and covers get tucked up under his chin.  
  
“Your brain, Sammy, I swear,” he hears.  “Emma is cutting you off as soon as she gets back from break.”

                                                                                                                            #  
  
  
When he wakes up again- really wakes up, with not much coya or drug traces in his system, thank God- he’s weak and itchy like he’s covered in ants and rough wool.  The steady beep of the heart monitor shouldn’t be as familiar as it is.  He was rarely in this position as a kid, but he remembers sitting vigil with Dad and Dean on more than one occasion while one or the other was in the bed.  
  
Now it’s Sam on the bed, the cannula irritating his nasal passages, making his throat dry, blankets bunched up under his arms, an IV sticking out of his wrist.  
  
Familiar, but backwards, just like everything else in his life.  He should be used to it by now, he thinks.  
  
“Hey, there’s Sleeping Beauty.”  
  
Sam blinks and Dean’s there, smiling like he just won a golden ticket to the Playboy Mansion, hair all disheveled, a good week’s worth of stubble on his face.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
That, if anything, makes his brother’s smile even brighter.  
  
“Oh, awesome, I’m not a mouse or a cactus anymore.”  
  
Sam blinks again.  “What the hell are you talking about?”  
  
“Never mind, I’ll fill you in on all the details later.   How are you feeling?”  
“I- okay?  Sore, mostly.  What…why am I here?”  
  
Dean scoots the plastic chair closer to the bed and sits down.  “What do you remember, man?”  
  
Sam tries to think back, everything is jumbled in his head.  He goes to shrug and grunts when it pulls on his arm.  Memories come like a flood; Crete, Nivens, the ritual, pain so bad and being so helpless that his heart rabbits around just thinking about it.  
  
“Where are they?” He sits up slow, careful not to jar his arm and he feels the wound in his leg pull.  Sam hisses and Dean’s there, helping him up, raising the bed, leaning him back against the pillows.  
  
“They’re dead.” Dean’s voice is low as he pulls back the bandages to take a look.  Apparently he’s satisfied Sam didn’t tear them.  “You don’t have to worry about them; it’s all taken care of.”  
  
“Oh,” says Sam.  
  
“Hey, somebody decided to wake up!”  
  
Dean laughs and stands out of the way as a young red-headed nurse comes in with a clipboard.  “Yeah, Sammy finally decided to grace us with his presence.”  
  
“That’s great.  I’ll go get the doctor so he can check him over.  It’s good to see you getting better, Sam.  You had your brother worried for a while.”  
  
The nurse pats his good shoulder, checks all the machines he’s hooked to, and then goes back out in search of a doctor.  
  
“How long have I been here?” Sam frowns.  
  
“A week,” Dean shrugs, and it’s like Sam is nine and coming out of a concussion brought on by falling off a bike, of all things.  He can see the relief and lines of worry etched deep in Dean’s face even as he brushes them off.  Sam swallows and looks away. His chest feels tight.  It’s good to know some things don’t change.  
  
Sam tries not to feel too worried and trapped when the doctor comes and starts in on poking and prodding and asking questions.  As he wakes up more during the examination, he starts realizing that he doesn’t feel normal, and not just post I-got-my-ass-kicked-and-drugged-still-healing, either.  
  
Sam tunes the doctor out and focuses on the glass of water by the table.  He pushes it to become a tumbler, one with red squiggles and designs like he saw in the last store he went into.  He can see it in his head, the exact proportions, can even smell the sugar and cream-laced coffee he wants to find inside it.  
  
Nothing happens.  
  
He tries again, pooling all his concentration and energy into the image.  He can feel it, sort of, the intent throbbing in his head, ready to reach out, but it never moves or floods out like he’s used to.  
  
“Sammy?  Sam, hey, you okay?”  
  
A hand shakes his shoulder and jars him out of his head.  Dean is staring at him, eyes wide with worry, while the doctor guides his head around so he can shine a light into his eyes.  
  
“I’m fine,” he mutters, even though he is anything but.  
  
Sam sinks back into the pillows and closes his eyes, vaguely hears himself say he’s okay, just tired.  There’s a thing made of teeth and fear gnawing through his belly.  Once, back in the early days of his wanderings not long after he left Dean and Dad behind on their hunt, he would think that nothing could be better than waking up one morning and discovering it was all a dream or that the ritual couldn’t stick forever.

  
Now- now Sam just feels vulnerable and sick, like someone’s amputated his legs while he was out.  
  
Sam turns away from the doctor and Dean as they start talking about shrinks and CAT scans or something equally unimportant.  He wonders if this is what his future self felt like, when Ruby betrayed him, and he doesn’t think it’s the same thing at all, but he wonders if maybe Crete and Nivens were right all along.  Maybe the powers were an alternate to the demon blood; he still fell for them anyway, and now he doesn’t have them, so it should be good.  
  
But Sam can’t escape the vast emptiness expanding inside him, and he wonders, maybe, if his life isn’t just one big cosmic joke to Coyote, to whatever other gods are knocking around.  Maybe Sam’s just fucked no matter what kind of life he tries to lead.


	4. Fourth Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean helps him skip out of the hospital the next day and it’s like déjà vu, the two of them roaring down the highway in the Impala, putting miles and towns behind them, only not, because Sam doesn’t really fit there anymore.

  
  
  
  
Dean helps him skip out of the hospital the next day and it’s like déjà vu, the two of them roaring down the highway in the Impala, putting miles and towns behind them, only not, because Sam doesn’t really fit there anymore.  Too big or too small, he can’t quite decide.  Sam leans his forehead against the window, watches the world as they pass through, and idly thinks about the past and future and visions and dreams as CCR plays softly in the background singing about hurricanes and bad moons rising over impending tragedy.  
  
He finds it oddly fitting, if a little late in warning.  
  
Dean is being strangely accommodating.  When they were children, Dean was a master at distracting Sam from his moods until puberty hit.  A stupid joke, a well-timed tickle attack, or the promise of an ice cream used to distract Sam long enough to make him smile.  He’s not doing that, though.  Dean’s just…waiting.  Watching.  
  
Dean lightly drums his fingers on the steering wheel, keeping beat, and looks over to check on him every few minutes.  Sam feels the weight of his gaze and the sinking of his worry.  He doesn’t really need the powers anymore to actually understand that’s what Dean’s feeling, it’s just simply knowing Dean, even if there is a five year gap.  
  
Sam closes his eyes.  He’s tried more times than he can count to use his powers since Dean left him alone to inquire about his AMA papers for discharge.  He gave himself a nosebleed twice already, though, thankfully, Dean wasn’t nearby and he cleaned it up before he came back.  
  
Nothing happens.  Sam can’t figure it out at all.  His only theory is that either Crete or Nivens got their ingredients wrong and drained Sam of his powers with their ritual.  The thought makes him wish they were still alive so he could kill them himself.  Being human again just…hurts.  He has a hard time thinking back to a time where constant aches and pains beyond the emotional were just a fact of life, or that things seemed so much slower.  
  
He can’t help but remember that, in the space of time they’ve been on the road today, he could have visited New York, hopped down to the North Carolina coast for lunch and walked the beach.  He could have gone down to Lynchburg to tour the Jack Daniels distillery just because and then ended the day overlooking the Grand Canyon and eating a burger from some little Mom ‘n Pop diner in Pennsylvania.  
  
Maybe Sam is supposed to have a deadly addiction, no matter what life he leads, he thinks.  Maybe this is his detox.

                                                                                                                #

  
   
Sam is still deep in his own head days later.  Is it days or weeks now?  He’s not sure.  Things pass by slow or fast, he can’t tell, but it’s hard to keep track of it all.  Everything seems to fade into a gray blur; he’ll wake up in one place and blink and find himself in the car a hundred miles away, or in a diner, or at a picnic table where Dean is stretching out the kinks in his back.  He’s losing hours, days, probably, but it can’t find it in him to worry about it much.  
  
He’s eaten whatever Dean’s put in front of him--hasn’t really cared to speak much past a simple yes or no, so Dean orders all his food, gets to motel rooms, and has complete control over the TV remote.  
  
Sam can’t remember the last time he sat down and watched TV.  During all his time alone, he never felt the need.  His eyes barely keep track of the people moving on the screen, much less what they’re talking about.  It’s some old movie, he thinks, but for the life of him he can’t think of the title.  
  
Sam doesn’t know what changes. Maybe it’s all the thoughts flying around in his head, all the old worries and arguments clashing with the new, but they’re outside some town so small it doesn’t merit a dot on the map, settled into a motel room that smells like cleaning chemicals and artificial peach air freshener when Sam finally says, “Dean.”  
  
Dean startles a bit.   The TV has been off for hours by then, the only sound the hum and whine of the air conditioner, though to Sam it feels like the blink of an eye.  Lunch was sometime back on the road, where Sam just sat down and let Dean order whatever, never said a word as he mechanically ate whatever was on his plate and stared out the window.  
  
“Dean,” Sam says again.  “What are you going to do about me?”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
Sam scoots over to the edge of the bed, plants his feet, tries to get his brain into some semblance of working order.  It’s much harder than he anticipates.  
  
“You saw me that night.  At the bar,” he says.  
  
“Yeah, I did,” says Dean slowly.  “You remember that?”  
  
“I remember everything,” he says.  Right now he really wishes he didn’t.  “I need to know what you plan to do about me.”  
  
Dean squints his eyes.  “What are you talking about?”  
  
Sam makes a frustrated noise in his throat.  God, if he could just _think_ without all the clutter.  
  
“I’m not human anymore,” he says.  It’s hard, drawing the words out.  They feel foreign and wrong on his tongue.  He feels a flutter of uncertainty in his stomach.  How lost was he inside his head lately?  Or, for that matter, the last couple years?  He realizes with a jolt that the last time he actually spoke more than a couple sentences was with Taz.  “I need to know what you’re gonna do about me.”  
  
“Is that what those hunters told you?”  
  
Sam shakes his head, closes his eyes.  It’s a little easier that way, he doesn’t have so many distractions on the outside.  
  
“I’ve known for a while.  It’s why I didn’t come back, I couldn’t…couldn’t do that to you and Dad.  I just, you saw me disappear.  I need to know what you want to do with me.”  
  
It feels like it takes him hours to form those sentences.  When they’re finally out he risks opening his eyes.  Dean is stony faced, sitting on the bed across from him.  For a minute he doesn’t do anything, and Sam wonders if he actually managed to speak at all, or if he just thought he had.  
  
The punch takes him by surprise, the burst of pain radiating from his jaw.  He falls back on the bed with a surprised yelp.  
  
“You son of a bitch,” Dean growls.  He bunches his hands in Sam’s shirt and hauls him back up.  “You _asshole_.  Do you have any idea-  Stupid bastard.”  
  
Dean hits him again.  It’s not as hard as the first time, he’s definitely pulling his punches, but it still hurts and there’s ringing in Sam’s ears.  
  
“Did you really think that me or Dad could ever…  I went fucking _nuts_ on those two when I saw what they did to you.  How could you think me or Dad could ever do that to you, huh?  We spent five years tracking down every lead, no matter how small, hoping it would tell us where you were and what happened.”  
  
Dean moves and Sam flinches, braces for another hit, but Dean merely grabs his chin and forces his head up.  
  
“You listen to me, because I don’t know what happened to you, but it obviously scrambled your brains bad.  Me and Dad, we upended the entire state of California looking for you and whatever took you.  We had teams of hunters searching high and low, questioning and killing every monster and spirit they came across.  Dad and I both nearly ran ourselves into the ground over you.  
  
“Now, you tell me Sam, does that sound like a couple of people willing to put a bullet in you?  Huh?”  
  
Sam searches Dean’s face, sees the raw anger and grief and feels the slight tremors working on Dean’s hands.  His throat is dry and Dean is still waiting.  Sam slowly, deliberately, shakes his head.  
  
Dean moves his hand to the back of Sam’s neck and squeezes.  “Let’s get one thing straight here.  There isn’t anything you do that would make me even consider killing you.  Now get that through your scrambled head and start believing it.”  
  
Dean pulls him in for a brief, bone-crushing hug, then shoves him away and lets Sam falls back on the bed.  Dean disappears into the bathroom for a while after that.  


                                                                                                                        #

  
Later, Sam is quiet and Dean is watching TV again, something on HGTV about gardening, of all things.  Sam probes the inside of his cheek with his tongue, winces at the soreness.  Dean mutes the TV.  
  
“I knew you were alive,” he says, voice steady, somber.  “I thought I was crazy at first, but these pies kept appearing.  Think I got around twenty, total.  I never bought any, they just kept showing up, and all of them tasted like the one we got that day before you graduated.”  
  
Sam swallows hard, thinking back to all the practice he did on the pies.  Eventually, eating them gave him a bellyache, so he made them disappear.  He never did find out where they ended up.  
  
“It’s all the proof I had, but I knew you were alive.  When they stopped, I felt like going crazy.  Nothing showed up for almost a year, and then I got a pie and a post card,” he says, looking at Sam like he should know what he’s talking about.  “I thought I was gonna die before I got those things, and then I got them, and I realized I still had to find you.  So I kept on.  I never gave up.”  
  
Dean just looks at him.  Sam says nothing. Dean looks back at the TV and turns the sound back on.

  
Sam thinks about it.

                                                                                                                     #

  
  
After that, strangely enough, it gets easier for Sam to talk about where he’s been and what he’s done.  Not all at once, of course, it comes out in bits and pieces because his brain still isn’t used to the idea that he’s here with Dean, and laying everything out.  
  
Hell, he didn’t even have long extended talks with Fred, so it takes time for him to build up to speaking more than a couple minutes, some days more than a couple sentences.  
  
Dean just listens and pieces it all together.  Sam watches him in the evenings when he has settled down and is on the edge of drifting off.  Dean will be on his bed or at the table, hunched over a journal, writing away as fast as his fingers can fly.  A couple days later, Sam finds his backpack filled with the assorted post cards and odd little things he picked up along the way with Dean’s bags.  The dozens of letters he wrote are carefully folded and paper clipped to the cards, the creases weak and the paper flimsy from being read so many times.  He feels a weird pang in his stomach.  It takes him a while to realize it’s relief.  
  
As the days turn to weeks, Sam starts feeling better.  He doesn’t really notice at first; his head is still jumbled, his thoughts still get stuck and slip away, but his wounds heal and become distant aches beside his bones.  One morning he wakes up and realizes he didn’t dream about Dean in hell or demon blood trickling down his throat.  
  
They’re outside of Colorado, just about to cross the state border, when Sam speaks up for the first time that day.  
  
“I didn’t want you to look at me different.”  
  
Dean gives him a look, but he knows by now to give Sam time to collect his thoughts.  
  
“When Dad told me to leave it hurt, worse than anything I’d ever felt before.  I thought, if Dad stopped speaking to me over college, how could he forgive what I became?”  
  
Sam inhales, exhales, watches the flat land roll out around them from horizon to horizon.  
  
“I didn’t want to give you a chance to say anything, either.  You didn’t the first time and I knew…I knew you’d look at me different.”  
  
It’s a damn speech compared to most days, and Sam’s mind feels both heavy and light at the same time.

  
“Plus, I knew the future, knew what I’d do, what I’d cause.  I thought, it won’t happen, so long as I’m not around.  So I stayed gone.  I thought…  Thought it was the right thing to do.”  
  
It’s only the second time he’s ever said any of that aloud.  The first was back in Louisiana on Christmas Eve.  He thought for sure the loneliness and anger and guilt inside was going to burn him alive if he didn’t do something, do anything.  So he found a liquor store and drank every drop from every bottle in there.  
  
It took him hours, but he drank, screamed, talked, and he cried.  He spent the last few hours before dawn talking to the chipped paint on the wall, chugging alcohol, wishing he felt something more than overly full, pathetic, and sour inside.  None of it helped, and he fixed everything before he left the next morning, hopping on down to Corpus Christi to walk around in the Gulf.  He managed to put that incident out of his mind, to cover it up and sink into the lives of the people he met.  He could help them with their problems.  
It seemed to make sense at the time.  
  
“The future isn’t set in stone, man,” Dean says sometime later.  Sam can’t tell how much time passed this time, but considering there’s a town up ahead, probably half an hour.  “I don’t care what that vision you had during the ritual showed you.  You saw what _might_ happen.  Besides, you’ve already done a good job of changing things around.  Did you see any of this in the vision?” Dean waves his hand around.

  
Sam shakes his head.  
  
“Exactly.  Honestly, I think you’re looking at this wrong,” Dean pulls over into the first gas station he sees and parks the Impala next to a family van where a little girl with blonde pigtails watches them from her car seat.  
  
“You got the vision and it scares you, I get that, I do.  But man, what that gave you is just a peek at what _might_ happen if you chose to do things a certain way.  All you gotta do is look at what went wrong and why and then work on recognizing when you made those choices.  Then, when something like that comes up, you go left instead of right.  Besides, me lookin’ at you different?  Never gonna happen, dude.”  
  
Dean gives him this half smile and a shrug, a _take it or leave it_ , and gets out.  Sam watches him go into the store and wander around, loading his arms with snacks and water bottles for the next stretch of road.  Dean keeps in sight of the Impala, eyes tracking back to Sam every so often.  Once, Sam would have found that annoying.  Now, it makes him feel safe, in a way.  
  
Sam thinks about what he’s said. He turns the idea over in his mind, pokes at it.  He’s still thinking when Dean comes back and nudges his hand, giving him a water bottle that’s cold.  Sam idly drinks and stares out the window and doesn’t really see the landscape as they pull back onto the highway.  Dean puts in a tape and AC/DC wails out the open windows.

                                                                                                                                           #

  
  
Days later they’re at some nowhere motel in some small town in the Texas Panhandle.  It’s three in the morning and Dean is asleep and snoring loud enough to be heard over the clanking air conditioner.  The air is heavy and sticky, it makes Sam feel two times too big for his skin.  Outside, he hears thunder growl low and long across the sky.  
  
Sam slips out of bed and into the parking lot without a sound and doesn’t even think about it, just goes with that strong, unmistakable pull in his stomach he felt around most of the people he helped.  He’s spent too long on his own, going where he wanted to, and even though he’s been back with Dean for the better part of a month or so now he still forgets.  
  
He’s lost count of how many times he wandered away when he left the car with Dean, just walking around, not really thinking about anything or where he wanted to go.  That’s why he liked hitching so much, one foot in front of the other, using muscles and breathing in fresh air. Looking instead of thinking kept him in the moment.  
  
Dean threatened to put one of those kiddy leashes on him if he didn’t stop it, told him he’d rename him Fido or Pluto, too.  Dean’s face was full of anxiety and relief when he said it, so Sam tries to remember.  Tonight, everything swirls away in the wake of the storm.  
  
Outside the atmosphere is full with electricity and the fresh scent of rain that has yet to fall to earth.  This is different from the rain in Seattle; it’s heavier, wilder, unpredictable.  Sam remembers passing through the area as a child, remembers that they didn’t call it Tornado Alley for nothing.  Above him, the sky churns and distant lightning forks across the black clouds.  
  
Sam walks out of the parking lot, out to the brown open field next to the motel.  The earth is sandy and hungry for moisture, parts of the earth so dry it’s cracked and jagged.  What little vegetation growing is either half dead or cactus.  
  
The electricity in the air gets under his skin, crawls through his veins, and makes him feel alive and powerful in a way he hasn’t been since before Crete and Nivens.  He feels like, if he just concentrates, he can twist and be halfway around the country with a thought.  Sam closes his eyes.  
  
He knows it won’t happen, but it feels like he might.  
  
The heavens open up a few minutes later.  Big, fat drops come down like bullets of stinging cold, just a few at first.  The earth greedily soaks them up.  Then more come, down and down in sheets.  It’s so fast and quick that Sam is soaked to the bone in moments, and so thick that he can’t even see the highway or the scattered houses around until lightning strikes close, illuminating everything for a split second that lasts an eternity, and then it’s gone, leaving colored dots blackening his vision.  
  
Sam holds his hands up to the sky and laughs.  Rain rolls down his skin, tickles his armpits, freezes his sides.  
  
Maybe this is what going crazy feels like, he thinks as he twists around, kicking up dust that clings to his skin and turns red.  Sam finds that he really doesn’t care.  It has to be all the energy in the air, getting inside, under his skin, worming down to his bones and electrifying him from the inside out.  
  
He feels like he did back in the Shadowlands the first time he woke up.  Only this time, it’s a hundred time more intense, and Sam thinks if he spins fast enough, racks up enough speed, he might just fly apart and become part of the storm.  
  
And then, like his mind was just waiting for him to catch up, the rain comes down and Sam’s mind washes clean of the fog and clutter.  He understands.  
  
He thinks it’s about time.  He’s been separate, apart, from everything for so long.  It was his own choosing, maybe, but he was just too scared, he realizes.  His fear kept him apart, not the vision, not Coyote, not his powers.  
  
Sam is tired of being afraid.  
  
Lightning shakes the ground; thunder shakes the air.  His hair stands on end, gets flattened by rain, stands up again.  Sam loses himself in the pounding in his chest as it echoes the thunder, feels its low rumble swallow him whole.  
  
The storm lasts years, it feels like, and then, as suddenly as it started, the rain dries up and the clouds move on.  Sam slows to a stop, heart pounding erratically in his veins, chest heaving as he sucks air into burning lungs.  He’s smiling, he realizes.  He touches his face, feels it stretch almost unnaturally.  When was the last time he smiled?  He can’t remember.  
  
Sam hears his name over the retreating thunder, turns, sees Dean running towards him.  He’s half dressed in his jacket, boxers and untied boots, eyes wide and chicken legs whiter than a loaf of bread almost glowing in the dim light.  
  
“What the hell are you doing, you moron?” Dean yells.  
  
Sam laughs, really laughs, and holds his hands up, catches the last fleeting drops.  The dirt squishes delightfully between his bare toes.  Dean grabs his arms, fingers biting into numb skin, and he shakes Sam.  Sam only laughs.  
  
“Dean,” he says, smile stretching wide over open teeth, a real smile.  “Dean, it’s raining.”  
  
Dean gives him this look, like he wants to hit Sam and hug the shit out of him, looks at Sam like he’s finally lost it all.  He probably has, and he’s never felt better.  
  
“It’s raining,” he says again.  
  
Sam can’t articulate everything he sees and feels finally into words.  They aren’t there in order and to be honest, he doesn’t feel the need to shape and define his epiphany.  It’s a first, for someone who likes to learn and research and understand and explain so everyone is on the same page.  
  
“Dude, you’re freezing your ass off out here.  Come on, let’s get inside,” Dean finally says with a shake of his head.  He wraps an arm around Sam, guiding him back to the room.  Sam goes with him, feeling a pang of loss that the storm is already gone but still exhilarated with the energy and new understanding.  
  
Dean pushes him to the bathroom and tells him to warm up.  Sam does, his mind going a million miles a minute and a thousand miles away.  Dean gets him back to bed, shoves him in, pulls the covers up to his chin.  
  
“You are going to give me a friggin’ heart attack, bitch,” he mutters.  
  
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Sam says.  His bones are still humming.  
  
“Yeah?” says Dean.  He’s looking at Sam strangely again. He can’t quite grasp anything that might be going through Sam’s head, but it doesn’t cut Sam to the quick like he always feared it would, because Dean doesn’t think it’s dangerous, doesn’t think Sam’s unnatural.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam nods.  He’s sure of it now.

                                                                                                                                 #

  
  
It’s two days after the rainstorm that Coyote finds him.  They’re heading to Bobby’s soon, now that they’ve talked some things out.  Sam is still messed up, his head still isn’t quite back to the way it was, but that’s okay.  He told Dean what happened in Stanford, he told him about the Shadowlands, about Fred and the sleeping giants and Coyote.  
  
Dean took it like Sam should have known he would.  He listened to Sam’s halting sometimes stuttering words until Sam was finished.  When the last words died away, Sam felt lighter, freer, like he’d been carrying a stone in his chest that suddenly wasn’t there anymore.  
  
Dean let the silence go on until he was sure Sam was finished, then looked him in the eyes all serious like, and said, “You know this makes you my pie bitch for life, right?  If you can snap that stuff up without a thought you don’t have any excuses not to get me pie whenever I want it.”  
  
Sam lets out a small laugh.  Yeah, Dean hasn’t changed all that much, not in the ways that matter.  
  
Dean says Dad is on a hunt and plans to crash at Bobby’s when he’s finished, but his phone is off so Dean left a message and told Sam he was going to pack.  Sam’s sure he’s put his brother off balance again, but he’s good at dealing with it.  Hell, Sam feels like he’s put himself off balance for so long that his newfound lucidity is a trip in and of itself.  
  
Dean is packing up the car, taking his time, talking to Bobby over the phone.  Sam is sitting on the edge of the parking lot, within sight, as Dean stipulated.  There is little evidence of the storm, all the water absorbed before it had time to form puddles.  The plants look greener, there’s flowers that shot up practically overnight, and the sky is a cleaner blue than it has been.  
  
Sam smiles, face upturned to the hot sun.  It’s red through his eyelids.  He can hear Dean in the background, voice a steady lull against the distant rumble of trucks on the highway.  Sam feels the shift in the air when Coyote arrives, bringing the same unpredictable energy to the area.  His hair stands on end.  It’s not as abrasive as it was the first time.  
  
“Looks like you made it through your gauntlet, pup,” says Coyote.  
  
Sam opens his eyes and lets them adjust as he finds Coyote.  Coyote sits cross-legged next to him, bare feet poking out of frayed jeans, faded blue shirt clinging to his frame.  He flashes a predator’s smile of white teeth in the sun, and Sam thinks he carries the desert and wild storm in him all the time.  
  
“I thought the gauntlet was getting back to earth?”  
  
Coyote laughs, shakes his head.  “Pup, the gauntlet was accepting who you are once you got home.  Earth itself isn’t home, that is,” he jerks a thumb over his shoulder, where Dean is leaning against the Impala, one eye on Sam, the other on everything else.  He doesn’t see the trickster.  
  
“I guess I took long enough.”  He has the decency to feel sheepish about it.  Hindsight is 20/20, he guesses.  
  
“You got there in the end, that’s the important thing.”  
  
Sam considers this.  “I thought it was the journey that’s more important than the destination.”  
  
“Who says this is your final destination?”  
  
Sam huffs a laugh.  “Touché.”  
  
“This is just a chapter, pup.  You got a long road ahead of you,” Coyote stretches and twists, scratches his neck lazily.  “If I were you, I’d celebrate while the going’s good.  Never pass up an opportunity to revel in the good stuff.”  
  
Sam nods.  He likes that philosophy.  
  
“Looks like big brother wants to go,” Coyote nods at Dean.  “You better get, I’ll see you down the road,” Coyote claps a hand on his shoulder.  “Never forget who you are, pup.”  
  
“I remember now,” he says.  He feels it again inside, all the parts of him that used to grate, they’re coming back together.  The crackle of the storm and the steadiness of the Shadowlands hum in his blood, they feel pleasant and natural.  It’s amazing, he thinks, that the way back to everything hinged on him letting it all go.  
  
Coyote grins, and he’s gone.  
  
Sam stands, dusts of his jeans, and walks back to his brother.  
  
“You done sunning yourself, Paris?”  
  
“For now,” he answers back.  Dean grins, sudden and genuine, and Sam grins back.  He climbs into the car as Dean starts her up.  “I’m feeling kinda hungry,” he says.  
  
“There’s a diner up the road.”  
  
“Nah, we don’t need to stop there,” he says.  Sam holds out a hand, concentrates, and feels the energy inside flow out of him easy and steady.  “I thought we might try something new.  Figured you might be tired of apple.”  
  
Sam sets the steaming cherry pie in the middle, flexes his fingers and holds out his hand, a pair of forks in his fist.  
  
Dean barks out a laugh, shakes his head.  He takes a fork, amused and unsurprised all at once.  
  
“I think keeping you around might be useful after all,” he says.  
  
Sam takes a bite.  The pie tastes like tomorrow’s promise and the tangy jolt of learning to live again.  
  
Sam thinks it’s his best pie yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted over on LJ for the spn_gen_bigbang under my poetartist account. There is also awesome artwork to go with the fic, created by vail_kagami on LJ. If you want to see it in the meantime you can find the artpost here: http://vail-kagami.livejournal.com/142167.html
> 
> The original masterpost for the fic at my LJ community here: http://battleroad-fic.livejournal.com/2432.html
> 
> For my first ever big bang, I think it went pretty well, even though I was tempted to go about as crazy as Sam most of the time while writing it. I'd like to thank escherzo for being a wonderful beta, who gave me a lot of great pointers and helped the story make sense. And much thanks to vail_kagami for the fantastic artwork, you were a pleasure to work with and it was the easiest collaboration I've ever been part of. This story wouldn't be what it is without either of you, so thank you!
> 
>  
> 
> A few other notes: coyotillo berries are, indeed, real. They are also extremely poisonous, causing paralysis that will lead to death, and are not in the least alcoholic. Do not eat or mess with them.


End file.
